A former secret service chief has been forced to renounce a special mandate in the justice ministry following criticism by parliament over secret files.
This content was published on
1 minute
Urs von Daeniken, who has been involved the reorganisation of the Federal Prosecutors Office, will give up his assignment as project manager according to a justice ministry statement on Friday.
However, he will keep his post in the administration of the justice ministry.
On Wednesday, a parliamentary watchdog body published a report accusing the internal secret service of holding files of up to 200,000 people in violation of the law.
The report slams von Daeniken, who led the service between 2001 and 2009, for alleged mismanagement and for neglecting quality control.
The storing of secret information has been a sensitive issue in Switzerland since a major scandal in the early 1990s when it was found that during the course of the century hundreds of thousands of people had been put under surveillance.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Report says Swiss secret services are breaking law
This content was published on
The delegation of the control commissions of the two houses of parliament investigated allegations of secret files after it was discovered in 2008 that files were being kept on two members of the Basel city council who were of Kurdish origin. This case turned out to be “the tip of the iceberg”, the document says.…
This content was published on
Justice Minister Christoph Blocher said on Wednesday that the cabinet believed the terror threat was still real enough to maintain the project despite criticism that it intrudes too much into the private sphere. The government wants to change the law to allow the Swiss secret services to be able to carry out communications surveillance –…
This content was published on
Hanspeter Thür said he also feared another “secret files scandal” if planned revisions to the internal security law were accepted, clearing the way for the bugging of telephones. At the end of the 1980s a scandal over secret files held by federal authorities rocked Switzerland and prompted an official parliamentary investigation. At his annual conference…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.