Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt television in connection with the Entebbe kidnapping of an Air France airplane. The kidnappers had requested the release of various prisoners who were detained in Israel and Europe, inter alia the applicant. The Swiss Government refused to free the applicant and the Minister stated on television the following: “Petra Kreuse cannot be considered simply as a Palestinian fighter for freedom. She is a person who has committed common law offences - offences in connection with explosives -and she must accept responsibility for this. In autumn she will have to stand trial as a prisoner on remand. One cannot fight against terrorism by releasing terrorists”. In relation to the above declarations on television, the Commission deemed that there had been no infringement of Article 6 (2), despite the claims of the applicant. The Commission admitted that the Minister had said on television that the applicant had been responsible for committing crime, adding immediately that she had been yet to be tried and that he did not know what the judgment would be. Therefore, according to the Commission, in such a context it was clear that the Minister just wanted to inform the public about an ongoing criminal investigation against the applicant. The Commission concluded that, although the statement of the Minister could have been worded more carefully, it could be seen as information released by the Government referring the doubt in the applicant and an announcement of the near trial. Therefore the Commission found that there had been no infringement of Article 6 (2). However, the Court specified that the principle underlined in Article 6 (2) was not only a procedural guarantee applicable in criminal proceedings but had much wider with an aim of protecting a person from being treated as guilty for a crime prior the end of a trial, by any public servant (in addition to the judicial authorities). In the case of Daktaras641, the prosecutor stated in his decision rejecting the request for termination of the proceeding that the defendant Daktaras was guilty. On those grounds Daktaras filed a complaint with the Court, claiming that his right to presumption of innocence had been infringed by the statement of the prosecutor. In this case, the Court noted that the prosecutor did not make the impugned statements in a context which is independent from the criminal proceedings, like a press conference for instance, but were put down in his decision in the preliminary stage of the proceeding, in which he rejects the applicant’s request to discontinue the persecution. The Court found the word “proven” which was used by the prosecutor in the rationale which rejects the request for termination of the investigation, as an unfortunate choice of word, but yet legitimate, because the prosecutor was not addressing the issue whether the guilt of the applicant was established by the evidence but to the issue whether sufficient evidence about the applicant’s guilt was in the case file, so as to justify the next step for putting the case on trial. 641 144 Daktaras v. Lithuania, no. 42095/98, ECHR, 17.01.2001.