The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed the lawsuit of lawyer José María Fuster-Fabra against Spain for the case against the Mossos for monitoring unionist personalities during the process. In a decision published this Thursday, the court based in Strasbourg has endorsed the actions of the Mossos. Specifically, it states that the Mossos reports “were related to the possible commission of a crime” and that “it was the responsibility” of the Catalan police to investigate. Thus, he believes that “interference” in the right to privacy “pursued the legitimate objectives of preventing disorder and crime and protecting the rights of other people.”
The case against the Mossos
Lawyer Fuster-Fabra brought the case against the Mossos to Strasbourg for monitoring unionist personalities after the National Court closed the case in 2019. The case was opened following the discovery of various police documentation with these reports, which the Mossos They were going to destroy the Sant Adrià del Besòs incinerator on October 26, 2017 and which the National Police intercepted. The Court considered that in this case both the purpose and the means used were appropriate and proportional. However, it decreed the provisional dismissal, which could allow it to be reopened only in the event that new evidence appears (https://www.spanish.cl/Grammar/Notes/Articulos_Definidos_Indefineds.htm).
The actions of the Mossos
The then chief commissioner of the Mossos General Information Commissariat, Manel Castellví, justified in a long interrogation and a report that all investigations and follow-ups were carried out according to strictly police criteria, in order to prevent possible incidents that would affect public order. in a “social moment of special vulnerability”, with numerous mobilizations of contrary political nature. Thus, the personalities being monitored were as possible perpetrators or victims of these incidents. The investigating magistrate specified that no private correspondence was intercepted, no surveillance cameras were placed, no telephone communications were intercepted and no home was entered or searched. For this reason, he concluded that the documentation only analyzed the public life and partially the private life of those investigated, but not their intimate life (https://www.spanish.cl/Grammar/Notes/Articulos_Definidos_Indefineds.htm).
