Hamburg court allows journalist to criticize NGO statistics

The Hamburg District Court has ruled that investigative journalist Sascha Adamek is permitted to criticize the statistics provided by the NGO Claim gGmbH regarding anti-Muslim incidents. The court largely rejected Claim's application for an injunction, allowing Adamek to characterize the organization's data collection as “unclean” and a “flat-out forgery.”

The dispute centers on Claim's annual report, which claimed a 114 percent increase in anti-Muslim incidents in 2023 and a further 60 percent increase in 2024. Adamek challenged these figures, noting that the organization increased its number of reporting centers from ten to 26 during that period, which naturally inflates the reported numbers.

Following inquiries, Claim acknowledged that if the number of reporting centers had remained constant, the 2024 increase would have been approximately 35 percent rather than 60 percent. The court determined that Adamek's criticisms are protected as permissible expressions of opinion based on sufficient factual grounds.