Lukasz Olender |
Warsaw, February 26 (EFE). – Justice in Poland tends to use provisional detention too often and for too long, a practice of which the Spanish journalist Pablo González has been a victim, who is serving a year in prison on Tuesday under that condition in this country.
“In Poland pretrial detention is used very frequently. There is a certain automatism in accepting the requests for provisional detention presented by the prosecution and in extending them,” Zuzanna Nowicka, a lawyer for the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, told EFE.
He stresses that, although the foundation had previously commented on González’s case, it is not involved in it and, due to the secrecy of the investigation carried out by the National Prosecutor’s Office and the Internal Security Agency (ABW), it cannot evaluate the possible evidence against the journalist.
González was arrested on February 28 of last year in Przemyśl, where he was covering the refugee crisis caused by the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Accused of conducting activities for Moscow military intelligence
The ABW accused González, who has dual Spanish-Russian nationality, of carrying out activities for Moscow’s military intelligence, for which he could face up to 10 years in prison.
On February 15, the Przemyśl Regional Court extended González’s detention for the fourth time, until May 24.
“On the basis of the information provided by the ABW, the Subcarpathian Office of the Department of Organized Crime and Corruption of the National Prosecutor’s Office in Rzeszów initiated the investigation into the participation of Pablo G. in foreign intelligence activities against Poland”, was the response from government sources to a question from EFE about the case.
Nowicka points out that the judicial system in Poland has a problem with the use of pretrial detention.
“As the investigation carried out by the Court Watch Polska foundation shows, there is a higher percentage of those temporarily detained than those who are later sentenced,” he explains.
He adds that the European Court of Human Rights has also denounced that Poland has “a systemic problem and not just a sporadic one with the application of detentions.”
In the opinion of the lawyer, the Polish court had, from a legal point of view, premises to initially place Pablo González under arrest, but the lawyer criticizes the measures taken against suspicious persons.
“There should be a minimum severity assumption. After all, there are preventive measures such as bail, police surveillance or simply a ban on leaving the country. In principle, the least uncomfortable preventive measure should be applied first, ”he says.
González spent most of the year in an individual cell with limited possibilities of communication.
In September, he took his case to the European Court of Human Rights and also filed a corresponding complaint with the Polish ombudsman.
In early February, the Spanish ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, wrote to his Polish counterpart inquiring about González’s situation.
In his complaint to the Polish ombudsman, to which EFE had access, González indicated that he was assigned a cell for dangerous inmates, closely guarded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and that, despite this, he is subjected to of frequent registrations, “even several times a day”.
Incarcerated in a Radom prison
The Spanish journalist is incarcerated in a prison in Radom – a hundred kilometers south of Warsaw -, in a cell that has a window with an opaque sheet that does not allow the entry of natural light and due to humidity as a result of Poor ventilation causes black mold on the walls.
According to the complaint, this situation, poor diet in prison, stress and isolation have affected González’s health, which manifests significant weight loss.
In the last 12 months, his communication abroad was limited to telephone calls to his Polish lawyer and the Spanish consul and he has not been able to receive visits except for one granted in November to the mother of his children.
You can only communicate with your relatives through letters that sometimes reach them in the form of copies, because they are read and translated by the authorities.
