Freedom of the press: “Zeit” files a complaint against the seizure

Hamburg. After securing interview recordings with the block children from a journalist, “Zeit” filed an appeal against the measure. A spokeswoman for the Hamburg Regional Court said a complaint was received by email from both a lawyer for the newspaper and a lawyer for the journalist.

On Monday, the court had the audio recordings secured from a “Zeit” employee. As a court spokeswoman announced, it is about a podcast called “Time Crimes: House of Block”. It contains recordings of conversations that the journalist had with the father's family two weeks after Christina Block's two children were kidnapped from Denmark.

In addition to Block's ex-husband Stephan Hensel and his new wife Astrid Have, Block's then 13-year-old daughter and Block and Hensel's eldest daughter, who lives with her father with her mother's consent, also have their say. The conversations were recorded in a so-called safe house in Denmark about two weeks after the kidnapping on New Year's Eve 2023/24. The mother released the children four days after the kidnapping on court order.

Hensel, the younger daughter and the ten-year-old son, who was also kidnapped at the time, are co-plaintiffs in the proceedings. The children's representative, Tanja Jeney, told the court that "my client is very shocked." She told the journalist things in confidence. Now her client feels bad, said the lawyer.

The Hamburg entrepreneur Christina Block (53) is accused of having commissioned an Israeli security company to kidnap her two youngest children from their father's home in southern Denmark to Germany after a bitter custody dispute. She denies this. There are six other defendants.