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Netherlands: Bluf! gets damages

01 March 1995

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Finally, the European Court in Strasbourg ruled on 9 February that the confiscation of the activist magazine Bluf! by the public prosecutor in April 1987 was illegal. The magazine had published a 1981 BVD quarterly report dealing mainly with the anti-nuclear movement and the communist party, when the police raided the offices and confiscated the entire edition. The next day however, on Holland's annual celebration of the queen's birthday thousands of free copies were handed out in the crowded streets of Amsterdam and other cities.

The European court has ruled that given the fact that the report contained no sensitive state secrets and that it was not proven to have been stolen, the prosecutor had no right to withhold the edition, especially after the new edition was distributed the following day. Damages in the order of Dfl 60,000 (about $40,000) are to be paid to the makers of Bluf!

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