The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in over 120 countries, welcomes today’s acquittal in the case against three Danish journalists, who were tried on charges of publishing classified intelligence reports under Denmark’s criminal code.

Commenting on the acquittal, IPI Director Johann P. Fritz said, “The decision of the court is extremely welcome and I would call on the Danish government to review the law under which the journalists were originally charged to ensure that in future the media are allowed to scrutinize the government decisions without fear of prosecution.”

“Throughout the hearings, we believed that the original story contained a strong ‘public interest’ element that warranted publication. The question of what was – or was not – known about Iraq’s weapons capacity was a matter of crucial debate in many countries. The Danish public had a right to understand and appreciate their own government’s role in this matter. The legal decision is an important victory in Denmark for the media’s right to investigate the claims of government.”

On 26 April 2004, Michael Bjerre and Jesper Larsen, reporters for the daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende, were questioned and subsequently charged with “publishing information illegally obtained by a third party” under Article 152 (d) of the criminal code. On 13 November 2006, Niels Lunde, editor-in-chief of Berlingske Tidende, as well as the two reporters, went on trial in Copenhagen.

The charges stemmed from a series of articles published in Berlingske Tidende in February and March 2004 that contained information passed anonymously to Bjerre and Larsen by military intelligence officer Frank Grevil, who was later fired from the Danish Intelligence Service for breaching the country’s secrecy laws and sentenced to four months in prison. Grevil apparently passed extracts of intelligence reports to the journalists showing that there was no credible evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.