Spanish Reporter Marks Year In Polish Jail On Russia Spy Charge, By AFP – Agence France Presse
Spanish journalist Pablo Gonzalez (picture right) who has been held in a Polish prison for 14 months without being charged with a crime.
A Spanish journalist is set to mark a year behind bars in Poland Tuesday after being arrested and charged with spying for Russia, although Polish prosecutors have provided no evidence for the claim, according to his lawyers.
Freelance journalist Pablo Gonzalez, who was working for Spanish online news site Publico and La Sexta television, was arrested by the Polish intelligence services near the border with Ukraine on February 28, 2022.
His arrest came just four days after Russia sent troops into Ukraine.
Despite a year behind bars, no trial date has been set and his lawyers remain in the dark about the charges against this 40-year-old journalist who was born in Moscow but moved to Spain when he was nine.
“The charges against the suspect concern spying for the benefit of the Russian Federation’s secret services,” Lukasz Lapczynski, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, told AFP on Friday.
If convicted, Gonzalez faces a maximum 10-year jail sentence.
His Spanish lawyer Gonzalo Boye said prosecutors had not provided evidence to corroborate their allegations.
“If they had something concrete, they would have sent us the whole lawsuit so we could put up a defence,” he told AFP.
“When they keep asserting things that we don’t have access to and keep extending his detention, we can deduce they’re going round in circles.”
Boye said he had no idea when the case would go to court.
Amnesty International on Monday called for Gonzalez’s “release pending trial” and expressed concern in a statement over “his conditions of detention”.
Edith Rodriguez, deputy head of the Spain branch of media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the Polish authorities should “either substantiate the accusations against him or release him”.
“Anything else is a violation of his fundamental rights,” she said.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told parliament last week that the accusations against Gonzalez are “very serious” but the investigation was taking place “within the legal timeframe”.
“He hasn’t been abandoned and I’m following the case very closely,” the minister added.
Several days after his arrest in the border town of Przemysl, Poland’s ABW counter-intelligence agency accused Gonzalez of being “an agent for the GRU”, Russia’s military intelligence service.
“He carried out operations for the benefit of Russia, profiting from his status of journalist,” it said.
Gonzalez’s pre-trial detention was extended by the court of appeal in Lublin until May 24, court spokeswoman Dorota Janicka told AFP.
When Gonzalez moved to Spain with his mother after his parents divorced, he had a passport under the name Pavel Aleksevich Rubtsov, featuring his father’s name, but on obtaining Spanish nationality, he took a Spanish name using his mother’s surname: Pablo Gonzalez Yague.
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