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British Press-Freedom Case Involves Anti-Terrorism Law
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Malik said Butt's arrest suggests that police are skeptical of Butt's conversion and continuing to investigate him.
Malik said he is refusing the police order because cooperating with police would mean that sources, including Islamist extremists, would no longer trust him. "If they can't talk to journalists anymore, then all that information will shut down completely," Malik said.
Mark Stephens, a British lawyer who represents CBS in the case, said the case against Malik and the others is one of the most important in years. By Stephens's account, British courts have generally been sympathetic to journalists' claims of privilege for unpublished notes and confidential sources. He dated that largely to the three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
He said that during that period, the public and the people involved in violence trusted that reporters were not acting on behalf of law enforcement, allowing reporters to stay safe and the public to be well-informed.
Stephens said the case was the first involving police attempts to use the Terrorism Act, passed in 2000, to compel reporters to produce their notes.
"Maybe I'm naive, but I had never expected this law to be used to this end," said Jonathan Dimbleby, a leading British broadcaster and author and the chairman of Index on Censorship, a group that advocates for freedom of expression.
