COMPACT ban – latest report

The now published ruling of the Federal Administrative Court dated 14 August 2024 (BVerwG 6VR 1.24) shows that it is no point in talking of a “victory for freedom of the press” having been achieved here. On the contrary: the court ruling is paving the way to abolishing freedom of the press:

As we have already said, the court has expressly signed off on the legal trick of the Ministry of Internal Affairs which mendaciously turns the press company COMPACT into an "association" and then, in breach of Article 5 of the German Basic Law – freedom of the press! – ­banning it in accordance with association law. This means that the door is open to the censorship and destruction of any oppositional publication. The groundbreaking, and in reality extremely evil, importance of the ruling lies in this main idea, which is why the court has exclusively put precisely this fundamental point at the forefront of its decision as an "official guiding principle": "The banning of an association ...  can also be decreed as an instrument of ´preventative constitutional protection´(!) ... against media organisations." – this is a blatant instruction manual for future censorship!

In accordance with the court ruling, in the ongoing procedure to ban COMPACT the (secret) police may, expressly before returning the "secured and confiscated evidence and property” (i.e. secured on their raids), “create hard copies of documents (files, bank statements etc.) and electronic storage media (including computers and laptops with internal drives, notebooks, tablets and external drives, memory sticks, memory cards, NAS storage, SD cards, DVDs, CDs) and analyse mobile telephones and SIM cards."

Because the procedure to ban COMPACT is, of course, ongoing!

Finally, only for the application of COMPACT-Magazin GmbH as the editor of COMPACT – as legalese would have it – was the delaying effect of the appeal against the ban provisionally restored. All further applications were rejected! Those of the film production company and those of Jürgen Elsässer, his wife and all his other colleagues who had also all been attacked in their private apartments! For this reason the court has obscenely decided that these victims of raid and censorship will have to pay most of the considerable court costs and even the costs of the Ministry of Law Enforcement themselves!

Our demands remain unchanged: 

The complete restoration of freedom of the press and freedom of information!

The reversal of the Compact ban in regards to both the magazine and the YouTube channel COMPACT-TV!

The immediate return of the confiscated production equipment and other assets (accounts, cash and private property)!

The deletion of all the stolen data and information in the possession of the secret police!

The complete rehabilitation of and compensation for the COMPACT team!