BERLIN (Sputnik) —Earlier on Thursday, local media reported that the journalists had appealed to the Berlin Administrative Court with a lawsuit against the Federal Press Office of the German government. They want to prove the illegality of depriving them of their accreditation for the G20 summit held on July 7-8 in Hamburg.
"We support the lawsuit of eight of our members who were really deprived of accreditation, that is, they were denied access, and we also support the remaining [journalists without DJU membership] in finding out how their names appeared on that list," Hass said.
10 August 2017, 14:43 GMT
The deprivation of 32 journalists of media accreditation at the G20 summit in Hamburg provoked a political scandal in Germany. German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that this had been done for security reasons, adding that nine of the journalists had been denied passage at the entry to the G20 summit, and another 23 blacklisted reporters did not appear in the press center at all. The Federal Ministry of the Interior explained that the blacklisted journalists had been linked to extremist groups, and also had criminal convictions. This explanation caused resentment from the professional community and opposition parties.
