On December 17th 2008, the Portuguese-language newspaper Contacto owned by the media conglomerate Saint-Paul Luxembourg, published an article on children custody rights in Luxembourg. In the article, the citizens interviewed, named 2 teenagers in cases handled by Mr. Kapitene of the office of the general prosecutor (SCAS).

On January 5th 2009, Mr. Kapitene filed a criminal complain. On January 30th 2009, an investigative judge opened at the request of the prosecutor of Luxembourg, an investigation for “slander” (art.443 of the penal code) and for revealing the name of the 2 teenagers (art.38 Law August 10th 1992).

On March 30th 2009, the investigative judge Scheer ordered the police to search* the Contacto office (art. 65 of the code of criminal procedure) “to identify the offender” described as the “journalist of Contacto who wrote the article“. On May 7th 2009, 3 police officers searched the office of Contacto and seized documents and computer files on CD and USB flash drive. According to the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the police officers didn’t inform the Council of Press in violation of the directive of March 28th 2006 on article 7-a) of the Code of ethics.

On May 20th 2009, the tribunal rejected secretly the motion of Saint-Paul Luxembourg to suppress the search*. On October 27th 2009, the appeal court confirmed the secret ruling*.

On April 26th 2010, Saint-Paul Luxembourg filed an application with the ECHR on the ground that the police search of Contacto office was a violation of articles 8 and 10 of the Convention. On December 5th 2011, the application was communicated to the agent of Grand Duchy of Luxembourg with questions to be answered within 16 weeks. The applicant is represented by Me Patrick Kinsch (Luxembourg).

* : On January 10th 2012, Ms. Catherine Fabeck of the office of the prosecutor general (CREDOC) informed us that the order of the investigative judge and the rulings of the tribunal and appeal court were all “secret” and couldn’t be communicated to ECHR News.