A regional court in Frankfurt, Germany, dismissed Palestinian photojournalist Anas Zayed Fteiha’s legal action against German media giant Axel Springer, deeming the claim as inadmissible.

Fteiha, supported by the European Legal Support Center, accused the publisher in court of violating his constitutional rights by falsely depicting him as a Hamas propagandist in BILD, Germany’s largest tabloid.

The court dismissed the motion on formal grounds, ruling that Fteiha’s lawyer, Ingrid Yeboah, failed to submit a valid power of attorney in its original form — a document signed by Fteiha — or in an electronically certified version, a requirement under procedural codes.

The judges acknowledged that obtaining an original document by Fteiha from Gaza posed an exceptional challenge. They found, however, that these circumstances did not justify waiving procedural requirements and that Yeboah had not sufficiently demonstrated the impossibility of submitting the original form.

“The applicant is in a war zone with closed borders and no functioning infrastructure.”

The court also noted inconsistencies in the materials submitted as substitutes, including photos that showed different-looking signatures and variations in transliterations of Fteiha’s family name. Videos and scans showing Fteiha in Gaza signing the documents, the judges said, did not convincingly prove authorization.

A spokesperson for BILD said the paper stood by the story in question.

“The Frankfurt Regional Court’s decision is clear and leaves nothing to add,” BILD’s spokesperson Christian Senft told The Intercept. “Beyond that, our portrayal constitutes a permissible expression of opinion and cannot be prohibited.”

Procedural hurdles complicated the case from the start. German law requires submission of an original, signed power of attorney. Fteiha’s lawyers had instead submitted videos showing him displaying his press ID and signing the authorization on camera, along with a digital signature.

Another issue was the requirement of a valid address. Fteiha has been repeatedly displaced by Israeli airstrikes in recent years. Yeboah provided an alternative address. Springer formally objected to both the missing original document and Fteiha’s missing address.

Ahead of the ruling, Yeboah criticized the court’s rigid approach.

“The applicant is in a war zone with closed borders and no functioning infrastructure,” she told The Intercept. “Under such conditions, meeting the procedural hurdles of an expedited proceeding was nearly impossible.”

Debunked Allegations

Fteiha accused BILD of endangering his life by falsely portraying him as a Hamas propagandist in an article published on August 5. In a military campaign with record levels of journalists killed, Israel has justified its targeting of media workers in Gaza by alleging they are involved with Hamas.

The story put Fteiha’s job title — “journalist” — in quotation marks and gave the story a headline that said, “This Gaza Photographer Stages Hamas Propaganda.”

Fteiha asked the court to force the removal of sections of the story that suggested he staged images of hunger and exaggerated the scale of Gaza’s hunger crisis to serve Hamas’s interests. His legal action argued that the piece violated German press law by spreading falsehoods and breaching the legal standards of “suspicion reporting.” The Intercept first reported on his filing in September.

Axel Springer rejected Fteiha’s filing as baseless. During a hearing on October 9, Axel Springer’s attorney, Anika Kruse, argued that the term “staging” in the BILD article did not in and of itself suggest that Gaza’s crisis was fabricated, but that Fteiha’s images were framed in a way that served Hamas’s interests.

In their written response to Fteiha’s filing, Axel Springer attorneys described Fteiha’s profession in quotation marks and said they “lacked knowledge” as to whether he had or did not have connections to Hamas.

During the October 9 hearing, presiding judge Ina Frost appeared skeptical of Axel Springer’s legal defense. She noted that statements implying Fteiha promoted Hamas propaganda could be unlawful and described BILD’s use of the word “staging” as indeed problematic.

Frost encouraged Axel Springer twice to settle by taking the article offline — in exchange for the plaintiff covering legal costs. The publisher declined both times.

The case followed an investigation by Spiegel, a rival German news outlet, that debunked BILD’s claim that Fteiha had staged photos of food distribution in Gaza. While BILD suggested he withheld images to manipulate the narrative, Spiegel found that Fteiha had in fact posted multiple photos from the shoot on his personal Instagram account.

Fteiha’s filing argued that BILD deliberately omitted this fact from its coverage.

“Overblown” Formality

Yeboah, who was ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings, told The Intercept that while she understood the legal reasoning behind the ruling, parts of it struck her as excessive.

“Some of the remarks — such as the criticism over the missing original document or the differing signatures and name variations — felt overblown,” she said. It was “unfortunate,” she said, that the court chose not to address the substance of the case, noting the judges’ earlier suggestion of a settlement involving of the article in question.

Fteiha is now weighing whether to appeal to a higher court. Another option would be to skip the expedited process and initiate normal proceedings before the same court, which would delay the case.

“That way, we’d no longer be bound by the urgency of the interim procedure,” Yeboah told The Intercept, “and could correct formal deficiencies.”

The post Court Asked Gaza Journalist to Do Something “Nearly Impossible” to Keep His Case Against Axel Springer Alive appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.