Journalist Pablo González has been incarcerated for a year without a horizon to cling to: he must remain in provisional prison at least until the end of May, and his legal future is unknown. The Basque freelancer of Russian origin was arrested in Poland during the early hours of February 27 to 28 of last year, accused of being a spy at the service of Moscow, and remains imprisoned in a maximum security module. If the unknowns accumulated at the time of his arrest, they are no less a year later. From his environment, meanwhile, they demand a fair trial and without delay, and that “basic rights” be respected, such as the right to communicate with their children.
Pablo González’s family has been denouncing that he lives “practically incommunicado”, suffering “hunger and cold” inside a tiny cell where he spends 23 hours a day, according to his wife, Oihana Goiriena. They also denounce that in a year he has not been able to communicate by phone even once with his three children, ages 15, 10 and 7. “We ask that his basic rights be respected and that, if they have the evidence they said, he be judged now,” says Goiriena.
At the moment, the provisional prison against Pável, as he is known in his circle, has been extended every three months. In theory, according to his defense, it can be extended up to 18 months from his arrest, although the reality is different. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly called Poland’s attention for “unjustifiably” prolonging, even several years, pretrial detention, which violates article 5 of the Human Rights convention. Strasbourg has also censured the habitability conditions of the prisons, as well as the “inhuman or degrading” treatment of the detainees.
From González’s environment, therefore, they focus on a preliminary aspect that has to do with the treatment that the detainee is receiving in a country of the European Union. And that is where they demand greater commitment from the Government of Spain. From this previous question, hardly debatable, the questions about the merits of a case that generates perplexity begin. On the one hand, there is the version of the González family, based in the Biscayan town of Nabarniz, and of his friends, linked to the media or to the University of the Basque Country, where he was doing a doctorate.
They relate the arrest, first of all, to his particular biography, which would explain the first detail that the Polish authorities alluded to after his arrest: he was carrying two passports with different identities. González’s family has had enough of explaining that the journalist was born in Moscow in 1982, to the marriage of Alexéi Rubtsov and María Elena González, daughter of a child from the Civil War. When his mother divorced, in the nineties, they settled first in Bilbao and later in Barcelona. It was then that he acquired his Spanish name, Pablo, his mother’s surnames and his dual nationality.
They also allude to the fact that his reports in the Donbass and his critical position with NATO, despite the fact that he also questioned Putin, would have worked against him, as did the climate that existed during the start of the invasion. In other words, they point out that a host of factors has led to a huge botch job, which has ended with González behind bars and the Polish government immersed in a kind of flight forward.
So far the version that they defend from the environment of González. Opposite, Poland accuses him of being “an agent of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation (GRU).” The spokesman for the Polish Executive, Stanislaw Zaryn, pointed out after his arrest that he would have “taken advantage of his status as a journalist” to “obtain information” that could compromise Poland’s security. The accusation of espionage, in any case, has become recurring in this country and has even affected politicians like Mateusz Piskorski, who spent three years in provisional prison.
Zaryn indicated that they have “reliable evidence” about González and stressed that he carried two passports with two identities, alluding to his Russian and Spanish names. A year later, Poland is still thinking about this question, and this same month it has sent a letter rogatory to the National Court to ask if the journalist has Spanish nationality and since when.
For the journalist’s defense, this is irrefutable proof that they have nothing against González, a flagrant detail that also leads one to wonder what they have been investigating in the last twelve months. And that is where the big question arises: is it possible that a member country of the European Union has gone so far without substantiated evidence of the alleged crimes committed by González? In Poland, where the case has had little media coverage, they remain silent. The same happens with the Government of Spain. And González continues immersed in a judicial labyrinth whose exit is unknown.
