THE HAGUE, 12/07/08 - The AIVD secret service is under certain conditions allowed to eavesdrop journalists. The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a ruling by the appeal court in The Hague, in a dispute between De Telegraaf newspaper and the Dutch state.

The AIVD decided in 2006 to tap the phones of De Telegraaf journalists Joost de Haas and Bart Mos after they published information about top criminal Mink Kok. This information came from confidential, classified material of the AIVD itself.

According to the appeal court in The Hague, "weighty interests of the state were at risk." The AIVD was therefore authorised to deploy so-called special investigation techniques, such as phone-tapping.

The Supreme Court upheld this ruling. "The journalistic protection of sources is not absolute, as it is limited among other things by the protection of national security and the need to prevent the distribution of confidential information," the Supreme Court stated.

De Haas and Mos wrote that the group around Kok had a budget for bribing police and judicial personnel. With the money, Kok bought police files and even actually carried out liquidations with weapons 'lent' for the occasion by corrupt police officers, the journalists reported.

De Haas and Mos refused to disclose the source of the AIVD classified files. The Public Prosecutor tried to force them to do so by taking them into custody. This was however discontinued by a judge after several days.