The European Court of Human Rights ordered Albania to not implement the order for sequestration of the electronic equipment of the online portal “Lapsi”, accepting therefore urgently the complaint of the journalists of Lapsi, writes Reporter.al. The Court notified about the decision the lawyer Dorian Matlija, the representative of “Lapsi”, who had submitted the request on behalf of “Lapsi” journalists. According to Matlija, the measure of suspension applied by the ECHR is rarely used and only in extreme cases, writes Reporter.al.
In the letter sent to Matlija, it is written that “On 21 April 2021, the Court (the duty judge) decided, in the interests of the parties and the proper conduct of the proceedings before it, to indicate to the Government of Albania, under Rule 39, that the authorities should stay the enforcement of the Specialised Anti-Corruption and Organised Crime Court of First Instance’s interlocutory decision no. 131 of 18 April 2021 and refrain from seizing any data storage devices and computer/electronic data belonging to the applicants.” ECHR letter continues by saying that “the parties’ attention is drawn to the fact that failure of a Contracting State to comply with a measure indicated under Rule 39 may entail a breach of Article 34 of the Convention.”
The web portal Lapsi.al gave light a couple of days ago to a scandal that showed how the Socialist Party has created a database that contains confidential data on hundreds of thousands of voters, “exceeding the law.” During the investigation of the case, the Special Anti-Corruption Structure demanded the seizure of servers and computer equipment of “Lapsi”, a decision which was refused by the journalists, fearing that this request would have exposed their source.
