Denmark: Surveillance of political activity admitted
01 March 1998
A former agent used by Danish Police Intelligence Service (Politiets Efterretningstjeneste - PET) to infiltrate a legal left political party and organisations went on the television channel TV2 at the beginning of March and in two programmes revealed his year long work. Among other things he talked about passing over membership lists, copying internal papers, lists of election supporters in Socialistisk Arbejderparti (SAP - Danish section of Fourth International). He also described how he was ordered to infiltrate anarchist groups, the South Africa anti-apartheid committee Landsforeningen Sydafrikakontakt/Sydafrikakomitoen. He also revealed the surveillance of trade union and legal strike meetings.
All this took place in the first half of the 1980's. Most of it took place with government approval from 1983, when the Conservative led government gave orders to the PET to infiltrate named political parties on the left, peace organisations, trade unions, solidarity committees and right wing groups.
The TV programmes also showed how PET sent an agent to bug a public meeting of the Danish-Kurdish Friendship Committee in the city of Aarhus. A report on the meeting was reported back and filed. When the TV journalists asked the chief of PET, Ms. Birgitte Stampe, about the tape she told them - and later also told both the Justice Minister, Mr Frank Jensen and the Parliamentary Control Committee - that the tape had been destroyed. But what she did not say was that the participants in the public meeting - which included trade union leaders, politicians and human rights experts - had been registered in the PET files in a written report contrary to guidelines laid down in a government declaration of September 1968 which said no one should be registered solely for their political opinions.
The Justice Minister ordered the chief of PET to make a immediate report about the work of the intelligence service over the last 20 years. This report was published on 1 April confirmed the major findings of the TV2 programmes and raises more questions than it answers.
The remit of PET is to prevent threats to the stability of the state and public order. But there is no specific law regulating the work of PET. Their working methods are described in the general law covering police work and the justice system and detailed practices are given in ministerial guidelines. Authorization to open a file on a person has to be given by a special committee (called the Wamberg Committee after the first chairman) appointed by the Minister. Parliamentary control is handled by a committee composed of the five major parties in parliament.
The report describes how PET uses different methods to collect information, ranging from open information to direct infiltration of an organisation. Apart from the rules regulating general police work PET is mainly governed by the government declaration of 1968. The new report revealed how PET has developed a very refined interpretation of this declaration to evade the limits on registering individuals. The declaration talks about people not being registered for their political opinions. But since organisations are not mentioned in the declaration PET decided that they are allowed to register people without asking the Wamberg Committee if the individuals are filed under the name of an organisation.
The agent first infiltrated an anarchist group in the city of Aarhus between 30 January and November 1981 and it was authorised by the then Social Democratic Justice Minister, Mr Ole Espersen. But the report also shows that the agent kept on working for PET and that he infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SAP) from January 1982 until autumn 1983 without ministerial approval. During his membership of SAP he gave PET membership lists, candidate lists for the national elections and was ordered to make copies of the key to the office. On television the agent said that he provided some of the 20,000 names of peopl