STRASBOURG, April 18 (RAPSI) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held Thursday that Luxembourg violated the rights of a news agency and its journalists to free expression and protected privacy and family life by issuing a disproportionately broad search warrant as part of a defamation investigation.

In December 2008, a newspaper owned by Saint-Paul Luxembourg SA (SPL) had published an article on families that had lost custody of their children. Naming names, the article focused in part on two seventeen-year-olds and the social worker that has custody over them. Based on the complaints of the social worker and her employer, Luxembourg prosecutors initiated an investigation against the journalist responsible for the article.

As part of the investigation, a search and seizure warrant was obtained against SPL. Specifically, the writer had used a name that wasn’t included as such in Luxembourg’s official list of journalists. It turned out, however, that a longer variation of the pen name was included alongside the name of the newspaper at issue in the official roster.

Still, in May 2009, police visited the newspaper. Police reports verified that the journalist was fully compliant with the requests by the police for assistance and information.

Three days later, the company and the journalist moved to have the warrant set aside and the search and seizure nullified, to no avail.

The company then filed the present claim with the ECHR. First, it challenged the search warrant as a on the basis that it had infiltrated the newspaper’s “home” in violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention), which protects the rights to privacy and family life.

On this point, the Court agreed that the search warrant had been out of line, noting that the authorities could have opted for a less intrusive means of securing information on the journalist’s identity. Although legitimate aims had been pursued in the effort – namely, the protection of the rights of the social worker and teenagers that had been identified in the article – the means had been disproportionate.

Next the company asserted that its freedom of expression rights had been violated by virtue of investigative efforts to unveil the journalist’s sources. As the aim of the investigation had been to identify the journalist, the scope of the warrant – which provided for the seizure of “any documents or items, irrespective of form or medium, connected with the alleged offences” – was disproportionate.

The ECHR ordered Luxembourg to pay SPL €5,635 for legal costs.

Notably, the parties have three months to appeal to the Grand Chamber before the judgment will become final.