Partial acquittal for Zurich press photographer Klaus Ròzsa

Ròsza was accused of using violence and threats to prevent two police officers from carrying out an official act during an occupation of the old Hardturm Stadium by an alternative group on July 4, 2008. According to the indictment, he resisted an identity check and allegedly kicked the police officers and spat at one of them. The single judge found Ròsza guilty on these counts and sentenced him to a conditional fine of 50 daily rates of CHF 30 each, with a probationary period of 2 years. At the same time, Klaus Ròzsa was awarded CHF 1,500 in compensation for the proceedings, with partial payment of the court fees. The private claims of the two police officers were dismissed.

Klaus Ròzsa, who over the past forty years or so has almost inevitably specialized in documenting police assaults at demonstrations, emphasized in a personal statement that the numerous lawsuits, almost always decided in his favour in the last instance, prevented him - and with him other media professionals who report on police operations - from practicing his profession and in fact represented a threat to the much-vaunted freedom of the media in Switzerland. Syndicom writes this in a press release. The probationary period of two years means a de facto ban on his profession, Ròzsa is quoted as saying in the union's press release. The ruling is therefore also directed against the freedom of the press.

The single judge acquitted Ròzsa on other charges. It could not be proven that Klaus Ròzsa obstructed visual contact between a police officer standing behind him and his colleagues while he was photographing them, according to the Syndicom press release. Similarly, his cries for help while he was being held down, pushed to the ground and handcuffed by the police officers cannot be demonstrably interpreted as an "incitement to violence" - especially as no one rushed to his aid. On these two points, the press photographer was acquitted of the charges of "violence and threats against officers" and "obstructing an official act". However, the court ruled that the fact that Klaus Ròzsa had moved away from the scene was an attempt to evade arrest. And the fact that he had ultimately complicated the arrest by dropping the case was "possible" and made him guilty of "resisting an official act". The judge took just as seriously the "true-to-life" descriptions of the police officers that Klaus Ròzsa had spat on a uniformed leg and kicked his feet in such a way that he could have kicked a police officer in the leg. Both points are classified by the single judge as "violence and threats against officers".

The judgment is not yet final.