Met Police lose FOIA appeal over documents on WikiLeaks journalists

In a win for WikiLeaks, a journalist has won a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeal with the Met Police to defend press freedom and reveal the existence of communications, between UK & US authorities, about WikiLeaks editors.

Stefania Maurizi, a La Repubblica journalist and longtime partner on WikiLeaks releases, has been pursuing various multi-jurisdictional FOIA requests about WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange over the past few years, and secured a victory against the Met at a first-tier Tribunal appeal.

“The victory in Stefania’s case is important first step,” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Hrafnsson told RT, adding that the tribunal decision sets “an important example for journalists in FOIA cases.”

The Met had refused one of Maurizi’s FOIA requests and would not even confirm or deny whether it has documents on three WikiLeaks journalists: Hrafnsson, Joseph Farrell and Sarah Harrison.

Nor would it reveal any details of its correspondence with US law enforcement agencies about the three WikiLeaks editors, including two British citizens, whose personal emails were secretly disclosed to US prosecutors after a court in East Virginia ordered Google to disclose their emails, contacts and IP addresses in 2012.

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