Spanish journalist Pablo González. Photo: X/@FreePabloGonz.
Journalists and jurists have criticized Spain for abandoning Spanish journalist Pablo González Yagüe, noting that Spain applies double standards in its treatment of freedom of the press. Activists from his support group referred to the Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares as a “liar” for stating that González’s rights and legal assistance are being respected.
A Spanish freelance journalist, Pablo González Yagüe, has now been in preventive detention for two years since his arrest on the night of February 28, 2022, in the Polish city of Przemyśl by intelligence officers from that country while covering the Ukrainian refugee crisis.
On February 15, the Lublin Court of Appeal decided to extend, for the eighth time, the reporter’s provisional detention for another three months, sustained under the initial vague accusation of being “a Russian spy.” According to Article 130.1 of the Polish Penal Code, the crime of espionage is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. However, no evidence against González has been presented to support such an accusation.
To bring attention to his solitary confinement in unhealthy conditions and the violation of his rights, his support groups in Madrid, Barcelona, and the Basque Country and the #FreePabloGonzález Association have distributed a video featuring several personalities, including various journalists, actors, jurists, singers, or writers, in which respect for his presumption of innocence is demanded and that he be tried without further delay with all guarantees.
In the two years since his arrest, the courts have not reported any evidence that could support the accusations. Pablo González’s defense still does not have access to the case summary. On February 21 of this year, his Spanish lawyer, Gonzalo Boyé, reported on social media that investigative proceedings of the case were only now beginning. These proceedings, Boyé wrote, “ideally should have been carried out in 2022.”
The inaction of the Spanish government
The case of Pablo González provokes silence at the European level and in Spain, where statements regarding his situation follow one another in dribs and drabs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs headed by José Manuel Albares limits itself to stating that his detention and conditions of imprisonment comply with legality and that all of his rights “are being respected.”
Pablo González is the only European journalist imprisoned in an EU Member State. The support group for Pablo González in Madrid denounced the Foreign Affairs Ministry for its inaction in allowing González to communicate with his children and improve the precarious conditions of his detention.
Minister Albares “has come to question his right to the presumption of innocence,” and “at no time” has he contacted his family, said the group’s spokesperson, Javier Sáenz Munilla, during an informative event at the Journalists Guild headquarters of Madrid attended by Sputnik. Sáenz Munilla described the Spanish government’s inaction as “painful” and “inexplicable.”
“The Pablo González Support Group denounces and calls the Spanish foreign minister a liar,” declared Sáenz Munilla. “He is deceitful. Not a word, except lies on television sets and in Parliament, which is a crime.” Sáenz Munilla revealed that the group has addressed a letter to Minister Albares for the ninth time, encouraging Spain to demand “that Poland stop violating González’s rights and that European legislation be applied so that he can serve his provisional detention in Spain in waiting for a fair trial.”
In this regard, Cristina Ridruejo, also a spokesperson for the Pablo González Support Group in Madrid, recalled that, in reality, the journalist “can serve provisional prison in Spain while awaiting trial.” However, Brussels has not asked for respect for procedural guarantees, even though the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reinders, already alluded to the framework decision 2009/827/JHA of the European Council, according to which any suspect can be subject to surveillance measures in his own country and not in the one where he is to be tried.
Provisional or eternal prison
Polish legislation includes provisions that allow the extension of the terms of provisional detention beyond two years and the imprisonment, not only violent criminals or suspects at risk of flight, but also of those suspected of corruption crimes.
Thus, in Poland, people are spending excessive time in prison without their fundamental rights being taken into account, “including the presumption of innocence,” as the president of the Polish Bar Council, Przemysław Rosati, said in an interview with the Financial Times. According to Javier Sáenz, in practice, “there is no limit to provisional prison in Poland. We know of the case of a person who spent eight years in provisional prison.”
According to a lawyer specialized in human rights, José Luis Mazón, the duration of the procedure “is not reasonable” given that the defendant is in prison. “But, in addition, there is a quite flagrant violation of the right not to suffer inhuman and degrading treatment, which derives from the conditions of detention, that is unusual,” he explained to Sputnik.
Mazón recalled that the UN Human Rights Committee “already condemned Spain for a similar case, for a two-year procedure without having granted bail to the accused.”
“The European Convention on Human Rights, which emanates from the Council of Europe, is above Polish and Spanish law. Even if Poland were to leave the EU, the Convention would bind it, because it is a signatory of the Convention,” said Mazón. González’s lawyers presented a lawsuit before the European Court of Human Rights in September 2022, which “should be given priority treatment,” noted Mazón.
Regarding degrading treatment, it must be remembered that Pablo González spends 23 hours a day in a five-meter-square dungeon monitored by cameras in “a prison that is within another prison,” in the words of Oihana Goiriena, Pablo González’s wife. He was alone for the first year; now, he is held with another inmate. “When winter began, he asked for a heater and was denied. He is feeling cold,” said Cristina Ridruejo. “He is not allowed to talk to his young children on the phone, with the excuse that they do not know who could be on the other end of the line. They also do not permit a videoconference.”
José Luis Mazón, who in 1994 was a pioneer in obtaining a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights against Spain for a case involving environmental issues, believes that Pablo González’s case can be brought to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
“It has international force; its rulings are not binding, but they harass the country at the media level,” he said. He is also in favor of requesting “priority treatment of the case” before the European Court of Human Rights because this case “is outrageous.”
The silence of the Spanish press
There is hardly any news in Spain’s media about the case of Pablo González. When articles are published, they cast a halo of suspicion over the journalist.
This lack of interest is actually “political servitude, journalistic misery, and humanitarian shame,” in the words of journalist and media researcher Pascual Serrano, who, in conversation with Sputnik, pointed out that the mass media serve the United States and NATO and that the vast majority of journalists who work for these outlets are only a “transmission belt” for the editorial lines.
“To clean up the misery of their double standards and complicit silence, they need, from time to time, to present as guilty the victim that they have ignored,” said Serrano. “Hence, any lie or scam that may be useful to them is spread as information.”
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“It is a complicit and painful silence,” describes Javier Sáenz, who recalls that the majority of his professional colleagues “are incapable of mobilizing and rebelling against the censorship flagrantly practiced by the owners and directors of the media without other purpose than to collaborate with the psychological lynching to which Pablo González and his relatives are being subjected.”
“I wrote a letter to El País, but they did not publish it,” says Javier Sáenz, asked by Sputnik if any media outlet has echoed the complaints from the Pablo González support group in Madrid.
“The Reader’s Ombudsman called me, because I am a subscriber, and hid himself by saying that they had already published many things. Now there is the case of Julian Assange, another outrage, and they dedicate space to it, but not a mention to Pablo González,” he lamented. In addition, he cited another comparative grievance. “The other day, El País dedicated two pages and a front-page call to the case of Rubén Zamora, a journalist detained in Guatemala. Why don’t they dedicate one to Pablo González?”
The attitude of the Spanish government
“What surprises me is the silence of Pedro Sánchez and the EU in this case,” admits José Luis Mazón.
“The case of Pablo González is complex and part of a change of something that I cannot understand,” said the lawyer. “With such a hostile attitude towards a Spanish journalist, it is very strange that the government does not shout to the sky.” Mazón expressed his opinion that Minister Albares’ statements were “rhetorical and cynical.” The case contrasts with that of Daniel Sancho, son of a famous actor and confessed murderer of his lover in Thailand, where he is imprisoned. He has received strong support by Spain’s government.
“Why has Minister Albares personally called, we know from good sources, certain journalists to tell them not to talk about the issue because the accusations are very serious and the evidence is conclusive? Who does the minister work for?” Mazón asked.
According to Sáenz and Ridruejo, the political parties that are most interested in the case of Pablo González and undertake initiatives are the Basque independentists of Bildu (González is a resident of a town in Vizcaya) and Podemos.
“In the Basque Country, there is movement; the media there are publishing things,” said Sáenz. “And EiTB [the Basque regional television] has done reports… What is happening to Pablo is going to happen to more people.” The lack of solidarity of the journalistic guild contrasts with that of France, where journalists “went on a 24-hour strike due to the detention, for a few hours, of a colleague who was investigating cases of corruption.”
Asked if there are beginning to be similarities between the cases of Julian Assange and Pablo González, Pascual Serrano highlighted that the repression of both journalists “obeys the same model of crushing the annoying and, above all, serving as an uncomfortable example for journalists of what can happen if you leave the fold.”
Poland has been governed for 10 years by PiS, a radical far-right party whose policies in the judicial field have clashed with EU guidelines. The new executive, headed by Donald Tusk, a priori somewhat more liberal and pro-European, could give a boost to the case and set a date for the trial. If not, this will indicate that the resolution of the case does not correspond to the sovereign decisions of Poland and Spain.
“Because if the new Tusk government, which is so interested in restoring the rule of law in Poland, does not judge Pablo González, we can say that the decision is not in the hands of Poland, but perhaps in those of NATO. If Pablo has been a PiS prisoner, now they would have to judge him,” concludes Cristina Ridruejo.
(Sputnik) by Yarisley Urrutia
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
