"Informer affair"

Quoted from secret files: Pilz sentenced

The former politician Peter Pilz

(Bild: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)

Former politician Peter Pilz was sentenced on Monday at the Vienna Provincial Court for the prohibited publication of information from secret files relating to the so-called "informer affair", which dates back more than 20 years. Pilz has announced that he will appeal this decision; the verdict is not final.

The trial against the current publisher of the online medium zackzack.at had already started in July. Pilz was charged with prohibited publication and defamation. A fine of 3600 euros - 2400 euros of which was conditional - was imposed for the prohibited publication.

Investigations after the end of Pilz's immunity
The proceedings included charges dating back up to 24 years, which are now being heard belatedly because Pilz initially enjoyed parliamentary immunity as a mandatary for the Greens and later for the JETZT list he founded. The investigations were only reopened after he left politics.

In October 2000, Pilz quoted from disciplinary files subject to official secrecy in the "spy affair", which allegedly involved illegal data retrievals from the police computer commissioned by the FPÖ, as he did eight years later in connection with investigations into the Natascha Kampusch case.

Pilz then presented the public with a finding of the disciplinary commission set up by the Ministry of the Interior. This was not a breach of the law, but part of his work as a member of parliament, Pilz explained at the start of the trial. Members of parliament could not carry out their work if they were subject to "gags" such as the civil service law.

However, the judge took a different view. The provisions would apply to everyone, he pointed out. This was comparable to a rape trial in which the public was excluded. No one was allowed to report on this either.

Acquittal of the accusation of defamation
Pilz was acquitted of the accusation of defamation on Monday. The accusation was based on a complaint filed against Pilz by the Ministry of the Interior, which was led by Herbert Kickl (FPÖ) at the time, because they felt they had been denigrated by a press release in April 2018. In it, Pilz had described the deportation of an Afghan refugee as an "official murder attempt" and accused the authorities of handing the man over to "his executioners and his stoners in Afghanistan". Pilz assured the court at the start of the trial a few months ago that this referred to the asylum seeker's "acute danger".

The decision by which the man was taken into detention pending deportation and subsequently taken out of the country was later overturned as unlawful, Pilz pointed out. The Afghan's asylum file was also retrieved, especially as Pilz had accused the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum (BFA) of having "deliberately produced a transcript bristling with untruths" and "falsified crucial facts" in order to be able to deport the man.