Half a hundred journalists warn that those accused of informing the case of the Attorney General only fulfilled “his constitutional duty” | Spain

More than fifty journalists specialized in legal information and courts have signed a letter in which they denounce the Imputation of four editors for publishing the content of a Civil Guard report of the open case against the State Attorney General. In the document, 55 informants of 27 media censor the opening of an investigation that, they warn, « can seriously affect the right of society to truthful information on judicial proceedings of enormous transcendence. »

The professional secrecy of journalists and their right not to reveal the sources are protected in the Constitution, and is considered one of the fundamental rights in a democratic state. However, a judge in Madrid has cited four journalists as investigated (from El País, The world and 20 minutes) After the provincial chief prosecutor, Pilar Rodríguez, also charged by the Supreme Court, filed a complaint with the instructor of his cause, Judge Ángel Hurtado, for the leaks to the press of the report of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard about his mobile phone. After receiving the complaint, The Supreme Judge issued a providence in which he agreed to deduce testimony and derive it to the Dean of the Courts of Madrid, « for the appropriate purposes. »

The case has fallen to the Court of Instruction 20, whose holder has charged four journalists for revelation of secrets (article 199 of the Criminal Code) and has summoned them to declare on June 19.

“If journalists who have limited themselves to fulfilling their constitutional duty to disseminate duly contrasted information in a matter of undoubted public interest are submitted to criminal investigations for exercising their trade, protected by article 20 of the Constitution, both they and their sources of information will suffer the deterrence effect (Chilling Effect) that the international, European and Spanish courts have considered extremely harmful to democratic societies, ”says the text signed by the editors and that they have sent the president of the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), Isabel Perelló; to the President of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM), Celso Rodríguez Padrón;

The providence issued last December by the Supreme instructor also gave course to the complaint for the same filtration presented by the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, already registered by Alberto González Amador’s lawyer, a couple of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and charged with fiscal fraud, which exercises as a particular accusation in the case opened by the high court. All have fallen to Court 20 of Madrid, which has only ruled for now on that of the provincial chief prosecutor.

The text of the journalists emphasizes that these complaints were directed against the parties personally in the cause of the Supreme and in no case to the media professionals, who enjoy the professional secrecy that consecrates the Spanish Constitution. « A guarantee against the interference of the power that tried to deter us from fulfilling our constitutional function, » adds the letter signed by the journalists, which claims « the independence, professionalism and honesty of the investigated partners and those that could be seen in the same situation in future dates, given that there are multiple the means that have been publishing in the same way the content » of the Open Cause against the Attorney General.

The Civil Guard report for whose dissemination is imputed to the editors is the key piece of open instruction in the Supreme and was disseminated by the vast majority of Spanish media, since it contained the messages exchanged by the provincial chief prosecutor with García Ortiz and other prosecutors of Madrid on the day on which the email of the lawyer of the Ayuso couple whose filtration considers the supreme. The attorney general changed mobile phone and erased all the messages after their imputation, so the agents have not been able to collect evidence that corroborates or discard their participation in the filtration that is investigated. However, the UCO report pointed to García Ortiz I had played a « preeminent role » in the facts and that document supports much of the instruction.