German media groups protested on Wednesday after government authorities at last week's G20 summit suddenly withdrew the accreditations of 32 journalists on unspecified security grounds. The DJV journalists' union demanded an explanation for the "scandalous and illegal" move at the July 7th-8th meeting in Hamburg. In total, the German government's press service withdrew 32 accreditations at the summit of world leaders including US President Donald Trump, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Germany's second-largest city. In nine cases, journalists were barred entry to the tightly secured media centre for 5,000 journalists, while the other 23 did not show up. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman and director of the government press service, Steffen Seibert, said he understood that the ban "raises questions".

Source: The Local July 13, 2017 07:18 UTC