This ‘freelance’ informant, with dual nationality, remains in prison on charges of spying for Moscow against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine
Spanish-Russian freelance reporter Pablo González is serving one hundred days in a Polish prison. He was arrested on February 28 in Przemysl, in the south of the country, when he was about to go with several local informers to the Ukrainian border to cover the war. Since then he has been held incommunicado on charges of “spying for Russia.”
According to the spokesman for the Ministry of Special Services, Stanislaw Zaryn, “the intelligence services identified him as a collaborator with the GRU military agency and obtained solid evidence; for this reason -he adds- the court has decided to extend his arrest for another three months». However, friends and family consider these accusations absurd and ask that he be brought to trial as soon as possible or released.
Since the outbreak of the conflict in the neighboring country, Poland has been on alert for the possible infiltration of spies and its “civil and military services have arrested seven people suspected of spying for Russia or Belarus,” Zaryn points out. González is the only journalist on that blacklist and organizations such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warn that “detaining an informer for months without trial is very serious.” The Warsaw authorities also expelled 45 diplomats from Moscow.
Five days before the arrest of this reporter, with dual Spanish and Russian nationality, the Polish Internal Security Agency arrested an official from the Civil Registry Office in Warsaw “for carrying out activities for the benefit of Kremlin intelligence”, authorities assured. According to the information provided to national media such as ‘Rzeczpospolita’, González had to copy and deliver to the Russians “documents of operational value” about Poles and foreigners residing in the country, as well as “verify specific people.” He was given three months of preventive detention.
military objectives
“It is difficult to follow each case because at no time have the identities been disclosed, as is usual in this type of process,” highlights a local journalist who investigates the arrests and asks to remain anonymous for security reasons. Few cases come to public light.
Zaryn states that “the main objective of the spies is to obtain information on military installations” and frames the arrests carried out in the special climate that exists in Europe after the invasion of Ukraine. The representative of the Government of Warsaw recalls that «Poland is a very active country in supporting the Ukrainians and key to aid deliveries. At the same time, he continues, we can clearly see that this war, as well as the imperial policy of the Kremlin, represents a threat not only to the affected nation, but to the entire NATO, and especially to the eastern flank of the Alliance.
But given the criticism received for arrests such as González’s, the spokesman for the Ministry of Special Services defends that “Poland shares current threat assessments with allies on an ongoing basis.”
This reporter, based in the Biscayan municipality of Nabarniz, near Gernika, and father of three children, has the assistance of a Polish lawyer, Bartosz Rogala, but has not been able to see his lawyer in Spain, Gonzalo Boye, so far. González was a collaborator with media such as La Sexta, ‘Público’, the EFE agency or ‘Voice of America’. He had a long history in this region in which he had already covered the breakup of Crimea in 2014 or the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the summer of 2020.
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