Prison sentence threatened – Peter Pilz in court: “Gagged like a civil servant”

“What I did in all three cases was my normal work as a Member of Parliament. And now the question arises whether the normal, dedicated work of a Member of Parliament is being punished,” Pilz said on Tuesday. He remembers everything in detail: “I know exactly what I did. And I also know that as a Member of Parliament I would do exactly the same thing again. Pilz.

Public Prosecution Service sees prohibited disclosure The subject of the proceedings is, on the one hand, the conduct of the then Green politician in the so-called espionage affair, in which there was an illegal retrieval of data from the police computer that was allegedly made on behalf of the FPÖ, and in connection with investigations into the Natascha case. The Kampusch case. Both times – in October 2000 and in the summer of 2010 – Pilz presented the confidential findings of the disciplinary committee set up at the Ministry of the Interior to the public. The fact that the Public Prosecutor’s Office is now inferring a prohibited publication from this is a “legal error”, according to Pilz, basing himself on a statement by constitutional lawyer Heinz Mayer, which he wants to present at the upcoming court hearing.

“In my 33 years as a Member of Parliament, I have never seen myself as a civil servant, but rather as a freely elected Member of Parliament. “I have never felt bound by the duty of confidentiality, the Civil Servants Act and all the confidentiality obligations of civil servants,” Pilz explains. It is the task of a Member of Parliament to monitor the government and the administration: “How can I monitor the administration if I am silenced like a civil servant? That is why the Civil Servants Act does not apply to me.”

“Being accused without investigation”
On the other hand, the Interior Ministry, then headed by Herbert Kickl (FPÖ), felt slandered by a press release in April 2018 in which Pilz described the deportation of an Afghan refugee as an “official assassination attempt” and accused the Austrian authorities of handing the man “over to his executioners and his stoners in Afghanistan”. A subsequent complaint by the Interior Ministry for slander was apparently not processed for years: when Pilz requested access to the files in February 2022, the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office said that the file to be reported had been with the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office (OStA) since April 2018. Pilz believes that the fact that he is now being summoned before the police more than six years later for his criticism of the authorities’ actions needs clarification: “There has been no investigation into this case. I will be charged without any investigation.”

Pilz was convinced that his words about the deportation fell under the right to freedom of expression: “It didn’t slip out of my mouth. I said it carefully. Firstly, because I wanted to express my great indignation about the behavior of the Minister of the Interior and his officials. And secondly, because I wanted to save him (the refugee, note) and mobilize the public.” The affected person was in mortal danger in Afghanistan after family members converted to Christianity, Pilz explains.

Will plead innocent
“My client will plead not guilty. He is convinced that he simply did his job as a member of the National Council and that it was part of his job to receive information and make complaints public,” said attorney Johannes Zink. Furthermore, there is no relevant literature on prohibited publications and the current procedure is therefore about legal clarification for all current and future members of parliament, but also for journalists. In principle, the question worth discussing is “whether one should negotiate in 2024 about alleged crimes committed by a member of parliament in 2000,” said Zink.

The hearing is scheduled for an hour and a half. If convicted, the defendant faces a fine of up to 720 daily rates or up to one year in prison.