Today, the Basque journalist of Russian origin Pablo González completes two years locked up in a Polish prison and, far from being clarified, his case has only become muddled. The Polish judiciary decided a few days ago to extend his provisional prison for the eighth time, which will last at least another three months, and there is still no date for the trial. Meanwhile, a halo of mystery continues to surround a case in which there is little room for the grays and in which two opposing positions coexist. On the one hand, some of his supporters argue that he is the victim of a judicial set-up; on the other hand, serious information is repeatedly leaked that supports the accusations of the Polish Prosecutor’s Office and that reinforces the thesis that he is a Russian spy.
Two years after the arrest of González in Poland, near the border with Ukraine and a few days after the start of the war, only one point remains clear: the detainee deserves to have all his rights respected. His family, on the other hand, complains that he is not being like that. Oihana Goiriena, mother of his three children, reports that González is in a “very hard and almost inhumane” situation.
“He spends 23 hours in the cell and only has an hour to go out to a small yard. He is incommunicado and in this time we have barely been able to talk to him. In these two years I have been able to visit it twice. His eldest son, aged 16, has only seen him once; his other two children, aged 11 and 8, have not seen it”, he criticizes. Meanwhile, his lawyer in Spain, Gonzalo Boye, has denounced that “proceedings that should have been carried out in 2022, since his arrest” are being developed. Boye has also pointed out that they fear that the provisional prison will be extended over time, “a common situation in Poland”.
The Government of Donald Tusk, in power since December, has pledged to put an end to long periods of pre-trial detention, which multiplied exponentially during the years of his predecessor, Mateusz Morawiecki. This is a route that would serve to give legal status to the case against Pablo González.
Meanwhile, the information that is known about the case comes mainly in the form of leaks, mainly in the newspaper Agentstvo, a Russian opposition media formed by journalists who have left the country. This newspaper has published that in 2017 González went on the same plane as Russian intelligence officer Sergei Turbin and that their tickets were bought jointly. In addition, Agentstvo gathers that, at least since 2016, the journalist spied on and drafted reports for Russian intelligence on people linked to the opposition in exile, such as Janna Nemtsova, daughter of the opposition Boris Nemtsov, killed in 2015 near the Kremlin.
According to the information published by Agentstvo, the journalist came to establish a good relationship with Nemtsova and, through her, established contacts with other opponents. Always according to this medium, González would also have prepared reports on the lawyer Il·lià Nóvikov or the journalist and filmmaker Vladímir Karà-Murzà. Asked by La Vanguardia, Zhanna Nemtsova has avoided commenting on the case and has pointed out that both she and the people from the Borís Nemtsov Foundation are subject to a “judicial confidentiality” agreement.
The journalist’s contacts with the foundation, in any case, were no secret and González himself published positive articles about this organization and even photos with Janna Nemtsova and Olga Xorina, who was a director.
Was Pablo González’s work exclusively journalistic in those days? Those around them say yes and denounce that the attitude of the Polish Government obeys a flight forward. Basically, they consider that two years ago he was arrested for his work as an alternative journalist, critical of the position of the European Union, “but also of Putin”, and because of the confusion that was generated due to his Russian origin .
The theses on the case are, therefore, opposite and only a fair trial will be able to elucidate whether González did spy work.
