16.02.2023 – Statement on police infiltration in social movements in recent years in Spain

16 February 2023, Barcelona

The police officer’s activity was documented from May 2020 to October 2022, thanks to an investigation conducted by the newspaper, La Directa.

On 31 January 2023, five of the activists, human rights defenders and union rights affected by the police operation, started criminal proceeding against the police officer for: systematic sexual abuse, torture and offences against moral integrity, the crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets, and constrainting their civic rights, including a breach of freedom of association. Criminal charges, which have also been filed against the police officer’s superiors, count on the legal support of Irídia – Centre for the Defence of Human Rights and the CGT (General Confederation of Labour Union).

In light of the seriousness of these violations, the organisations and collectives undersigned state that:

1. In this case, the police operation reveals clear gender discrimination that serves a dual purpose. Firstly, to obtain information and to manipulate civil society and the organisation of
   different social movements in Barcelona. Secondly, to punish women involved in such collectives and struggles.
2. Using intimate, sexual relationships for the purpose of state espionage stems from sexism in the police and the institutional violence that currently exists in Spain. In this case, sexual violence is institutional violence because the acts were perpetrated by a police officer in the exercise of his duties, which were authorised, endorsed and permitted by the institutional structure to which he belongs.
3. Such police operations are unnecessary and unjustifiable in any democracy, and they undermine the rule of law, as they promote the use of tactics aimed at persecuting political dissent; and human rights defenders, as well as reducing the space for civil society and its ability to organise.
4. Although we know that state surveillance is currently a reality in Spain (through the use of programmes such as Pegasus and the discovery of two other infiltrated police officer, uncovered by La Directa on 7 June 2022 and 13 February 2023), this case represents a significant escalation because of the extent to which individual and collective rights are affected and the impact it has on the people directly affected and on the movements themselves.
5. This is not an isolated case. Although this kind of infiltration should be considered an exceptional resource, subject to very strict and specific conditions, the infiltration of police officers into social and political movements is a practice that has also been used in other countries. Particularly noteworthy is the precedent set in the United Kingdom, where, in 2021, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal concluded that the deployment of Mark Kennedy, an undercover officer whohad had relations with several women, one of them lasting more than six years, violated five fundamental human rights: the prohibition on torture and/or inhuman and degrading treatment, the right to a private and family life, freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, and the prohibition on discrimination, in this case on grounds of sex.

These events show that all citizens and associations are at risk of becoming victims of these arbitrary and abusive violations. In this way, the use of such operations intimidates and has a chilling effect on citizens, significantly restricting civil society’s political space. As in the UK, this case should generate public debate on the limits and control of policing in a state governed by the rule of law and democracy.

The undersigned organisations note that the Spanish state has crossed a lines in terms of the violation of fundamental rights, exploiting intimate and sexual relationships to monitor political dissident. It is essential to expose, name, and challenge this type of police strategy, integrated into a state policy, as well as the specific gender-based violence it entails, in order to demand truth, justice, reparation and, above all, prevent these events from happening again.

It is important to remember that international law establishes a duty on state to investigate effectively and thoroughly in order to comply with their obligations to the victim and, also, to society, in their obligation to prevent future violations, as take action in the face of the most serious human rights abuses.

UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association noted, in his follow-up mission to the UK in 2017, that such operations can cause profound and irreparableharm, both “to the survivors and to the well-being of the general population with respect to the free of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of given the increased of mistrust” resulting from the public awareness of the case. He noted that in these cases
“the harm can only be partially remedied through a process of real and transparent accountability for those affected, as well as reparation.”

In view of the above, the 88 undersigned organisations call on Spain to: