Hamburg court partly lifts search order over Zeit recordings in Block trial

Court scales back search order

On Tuesday, 27 October, the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht Hamburg) lifted parts of its own search order in the Block trial after complaints from the Zeit publisher and a Zeit journalist. The court withdrew the order to search for contract documents between the journalist or the publisher and the Block family. The chamber said it no longer believed such papers existed, because the journalist's lawyer had stated there were no written contracts and no money had been paid, and the court did not doubt those statements. The court also limited the seizure to recordings of talks held on 15 and 16 January 2024. Recordings with the older daughter were not covered by the orders, so their provisional seizure was declared unlawful. In its press release, the court put it this way:

“In light of this, the chamber has declared the provisional seizure of the recordings concerning the older daughter unlawful.”

Recordings with the younger daughter stay sealed

The chamber still holds that seizing the remaining recordings was lawful, because the material could matter for judging the children's statements and therefore for the question of guilt. The Zeit journalist talked with the 13-year-old daughter for several hours on 15 January 2024, shortly after the abduction and before detailed police interviews. Her father, his wife and her ten-year-old brother were present during the conversation, according to the court. The chamber argues that questioning a child in front of several adult authority figures can create suggestive influences on the child's testimony. Without the full conversation and the questions asked, the court says it may not be possible to assess how far it can rely on the children's later statements to police. The recordings are to remain sealed for the time being.

Background to the case

Christina Block is on trial as the defendant. She is alleged to have commissioned an Israeli security firm, after a custody dispute, to take her two youngest children from her ex-husband Stephan Hensel in Denmark and bring them to Germany. Block denies the allegation. Excerpts from the journalist's conversations were published in late September 2026 in the podcast "Zeit Verbrechen: House of Block", in which the 13-year-old daughter described her abduction in detail. Block's defence objected to this, and the daughter had earlier declined to testify as a witness in court. The journalist had held some of the conversations shortly after the abduction, and the search concerned the complete recordings, not only the published excerpts. The court seized the recordings on 12 October.

What happens next

The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht Hamburg) must now decide whether the seizure violated press freedom or was necessary for the trial and therefore lawful. The Higher Regional Court will issue the final decision on these questions. Before that, the Hamburg Public Prosecutor General's office can comment first. The court's 23-page decision was published on Tuesday. Reports differ on the total volume of the audio material, with Spiegel Online citing 160 hours and tagesschau citing ten hours, while the court's focus is about ten hours of recordings from 15 and 16 January 2024.