There are three charges against him, involving events from 2000, 2010 and 2018, when Pilz was in parliament for the Greens and the JETZT list. For the ex-politician and current publisher of the online medium zackzack.at, the allegations are baseless.
“What I did in all three cases was my normal work as a member of parliament. And now the question is whether the normal, committed work of a member of parliament is being punished,” said Pilz in an interview with the APA on Tuesday. He remembers everything in detail: “I know exactly what I did. And I also know that I would do it exactly the same way again as a member of parliament.” It is “part of the official duties of a member of parliament to name grievances in the strongest possible terms and to take a public stance in such situations,” stressed Pilz.
Spy affair
The subject of the proceedings is, on the one hand, the actions of the then Green politician in the so-called spy affair, which involved prohibited data queries from the police computer allegedly commissioned by the FPÖ, and in connection with investigations into the Natascha Kampusch case. Both times – in October 2000 and in the summer of 2010 – Pilz presented to the public findings of the disciplinary commission set up at the Ministry of the Interior, which were otherwise subject to confidentiality. The fact that the public prosecutor’s office is now deriving a prohibited publication from this is a “legal error,” said Pilz, basing his argument on a statement by constitutional lawyer Heinz Mayer, which he intends to present at the upcoming court hearing.
“I never saw myself as a civil servant”
“In my 33 years as a member of parliament, I have never seen myself as a civil servant, but as a freely elected member of parliament. I have also never felt bound by official secrecy, the Civil Service Act and all civil servants’ duty of confidentiality,” explained Pilz. The task of a member of parliament is to control the government and administration: “How am I supposed to control the administration if I am gagged like a civil servant? That is why the Civil Service Act does not apply to me.”
On the other hand, the Interior Ministry, then headed by Herbert Kickl (FPÖ), felt vilified by a press release in April 2018 in which Pilz described the deportation of an Afghan refugee as an “official attempted murder” and accused the Austrian authorities of handing the man over to “his executioners and his stoners in Afghanistan”. A subsequent complaint filed by the Interior Ministry for defamation 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 subject to reporting had been with the Vienna Public Prosecutor’s Office (OStA) since April 2018. Pilz believes that the fact that he is now being brought before the judge more than six years later for his criticism of the authorities’ actions needs to be clarified: “There has been no investigation into this matter. I am being charged without any investigations.”
Right to freedom of expression
Pilz was convinced that his words about the deportation were covered by the right to freedom of expression: “It didn’t slip out. I said it after careful consideration. Firstly, because I wanted to express my great indignation about the behavior of the Interior Minister and his officials. And secondly, because I wanted to save him (the refugee, ed.) and mobilize the public.” The person concerned had been in mortal danger in Afghanistan after family members had converted to Christianity, explained Pilz.
The hearing is scheduled to last one and a half hours. If convicted, the defendant faces a fine of up to 720 daily rates or up to one year in prison.
