Switzerland: political policing
01 July 1992
Professor Krauss, University of Basel and Berlin, told a conference on political policing in Bern, Switzerland that the internal security agencies were looking for "threats" to the security of the state. "The threat to the internal security agencies in these times when there are no threats at all, is that without "threats" they could be closed down", he said. These threats mirrored the common theme of issues raised in the Trevi and Schengen groups - organised crime, drugs, illegal immigration and public order. (Switzerland is not in the EC but attends the Trevi Group meetings as one of the "friends" of Trevi). The conference was organised by the Kommittee Schluss mit dem Schnuffelstaat (Committee to End the Prying State) and attended by groups from Belgium, Germany, Holland and the UK.
The Committee was formed following a scandal in 1988 when the then Minister of Justice and Police gave information in a case involving money-laundering to her husband a criminal lawyer. Although criminal charges against the Minister and others were dismissed the Swiss parliament set up an inquiry (PUK 1) which revealed in 1990 that the Political Police had collected files on 900,000 people, two-thirds foreigners, out of a total population of 6.5 million. There were also files on 30,000 organisations. 350,000 people made applications to see their personal files, 39,000 of whom had index cards and files held on them. The 39,000 people and several hundred organisations were given copies of the file index cards on their "political" activity which only contained basic information. At the end of June the Swiss parliament decided they would not be allowed to see their files. Only in the city of Zurich were files given to some 3,000 people because these files had never been sent to the Federal Police Department. Records on most people were held at canton (regional) level as well as the federal (state) level.
The Military Secret Service also gathered information on more than 7,000 people who were shown their files. The files contained information gathered by the Secret Service and that passed on by the Federal Police.
One of the projects undertaken by the political police was to try to find common factors using 25 plus variables - single parent, broken home, students, signing petitions and attending demonstrations - of "members" of anarchist groups, and concluded there were none.
At the federal level there are three organisations with police powers operating under the Ministry of Justice and Police. The Federal Police, the Aliens Police and the Federal Division of the Public Prosecutor (this is comprised of five sections with police powers including the Political Police who deal with internal security and the detection of undesirable aliens).
State protection law
The government responded to criticism by putting a Bill on state protection before the Swiss parliament in September 1991. The Bill covers organised crime, threats endangering Switzerland's foreign relations and thus its security, terrorism, violent extremism and the threat or use of force to overthrow the state. A "terrorist" threat is defined as an "attack against the physical or psychological integrity of a person, aimed at achieving a political or illegal goal by creating fear and fright". It allows the use of undercover agents and optical and acoustic surveillance with authorisation of the Federal Court in homes and offices, but no authorisation for surveillance in public places is required. The Federal Police will have automatic access to all personal records held by the Confederation and the cantons; information can be passed to the security agencies of other countries to safeguard the security interests of Switzerland or those of the receiving state; an obligation is placed on post and telecommunications services to pass on information which is a "threat to internal security" thus by- passing current legal provisions; and employees of the state will be subject to