Journalists acquitted in Nazi case
February 11, 2012
A German court on Thursday acquitted two Dutch journalists of violating privacy laws when they secretly filmed an interview with a 90-year-old former Nazi SS assassin in his retirement home.
The two TV journalists, Jelle Visser and Jan Ponsen, used a hidden camera to film a 2009 interview with Heinrich Boere, who was accused of murdering three people in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands in 1944.
Boere confessed to killing pharmacist Fritz Bicknese, bicycle shop owner Teunis de Groot and Frans-Willem Kusters, but argued that as a member of an SS commando unit tasked with killing Dutch resistance members, he risked being sent to a concentration camp if he refused. Boere began serving a life sentence in December for the shooting deaths.
The court in the west German town of Eschweiler acquitted Visser and Ponsen of breach of privacy, ruling that the public interest outweighed Boere's right to privacy in the retirement home where the interview was conducted. The two journalists faced up to three years in prison.
"We thought it was a much bigger story that Heinrich Boere lived 60 years quietly after killing people than what we did, to film him with a hidden camera," Visser said.
Visser told the news agency AFP that he and Ponsen were happy with the verdict, adding: "That's freedom of the press."
slk/ai (AFP, dpa)