Polish court rejects appeal against detention by Spanish journalist accused of spying for Russia

A Polish court has rejected an appeal by a Spanish journalist, who also holds Russian citizenship, against the extension of his detention in Poland, where he has been held since February on suspicion of spying for Russia.

The journalist – who can be named only as Pablo G. under Polish privacy law – was detained on 28 February while reporting on the refugee crisis at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Polish officials claim he is an agent of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.

In May, the regional court in Przemyśl granted prosecutors’ request to extend the journalist’s pretrial detention for a further three months, a decision appealed by the journalist’s lawyer, Bartosz Rogała. On Wednesday, however, the appeals court in Rzeszów rejected that appeal.

“The court decided that there was a high probability of [Pablo G.] committing the act and agreed with the arguments of the prosecutors,” a spokesman for the National Public Prosecutor’s Office told state broadcaster TVP.

“The judges did not take our arguments into account, so Pablo G. will remain in custody,” said Rogała, quoted by online news service O2.

Under Polish law, a suspect can be held in detention for years while authorities continue to investigate.

In March, shortly after Pablo G. had been detained, the spokesman for Poland’s security services, Stanisław Żaryn, said that they had “secured vast evidence” pointing to the fact that the journalist “carried out operations for the benefit of Russia”

Pablo G. had “profited from his status of journalist, which enabled him to freely travel around the world and Europe, including military conflict zones and territories marked with political tensions”, added Żaryn. Under Polish law, the maximum penalty for espionage on behalf of another country is 10 years in prison.

Pablo G.’s family reject the allegations. They worry that the suspicion regarding espionage might stem from the fact that the journalist carried two passports, Spanish and Russian, under two different names, reports the Guardian.

The Spanish passport carried his maternal surname while the Russian passport carried the name of his father, as well as the journalist’s first name in its Russian form, Pavel.

As reported by Spanish daily La Vanguardia, Pablo G.’s wife and the mother of his three children explained that her husband was born in 1982 in Moscow and lived there until he was nine years old. Then his parents divorced and his mother set off for her father’s homeland.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based NGO, has called on “the Polish authorities [to] be more transparent about the evidence they hold against him, because so far information is scarce and detaining a journalist for months without trial is very serious”, reports the Guardian.

Another media rights group, the International Press Institute, in April likewise expressed “concern about lack of transparency and apparent violation of right to legal aid” for Pablo G.

Main image credit: Twitter

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.