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Polish military prosecutors examined the phone records of three investigative journalists who were reporting on the investigation into the April 10, 2010 Smolensk plane crash, reported Rzeczpospolita. This, according to human right activists, amounts to a breach in the laws protecting journalistic sources.

“Requesting the name of a source from a journalist, if that source wishes to stay anonymous, is a breach of human rights,” Dorota Głowacka, lawyer at the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation in Poland told WBJ.pl. “So it seems the prosecutor’s office thinks they found a way around this by not asking the journalists themselves and checking their phone records to see who they had contact with,” she added.

According to media reports, the Military Prosecutors Office requested phone call and text message recordings from TVN24 journalist Maciej Duda, as well as Cezary Gmyz and Grażyna Zawadka, both of Rzeczpospolita. The purpose was to find out the source of leaked information about the Smolensk investigation that the three journalists made public.

Cezary Gmyz told TVN24 that military prosecutors had breached the law that forbids the interrogation of journalists regarding their sources. “I was shocked to find my phone records in prosecutor Pasionek's file,” he said. Mr Gmyz and Mr Duda stated that they would submit a complaint to the court regarding what they perceive as military prosecutors overstepping their authority.

The journalists’ version is contested, however. “The media is lying,” military prosecutor Mikołaj Przybył told WBJ.pl. “We checked the phone records of prosecutor Pasionek, from which we established that he was in contact with the journalists. We did not check the phone records of the journalists themselves.”

Earlier this year, prosecutor Marek Pasionek, who was in charge of the Smolensk investigation, was removed from his post due to suspicions that he leaked information to the press. He has not been charged however and the case was discontinued.

Izabela Depczyk