Former CIA and NSA technical consultant Edward Snowden, who now has permanent residency in Russia having claimed asylum there in 2013, is one of the many people who have commented on the searches of Gonzalo Boye's home and office in Madrid ordered yesterday by Spain's National Audience. Boye is now well-known as one of the lawyers representing Catalan president Carles Puigdemont; the searches, however, refer to allegations he was involved in money laundering for drug traffickers. He has been summonsed to appear in court on Wednesday.
Everyone who knows @boye_g recognizes the Spanish police's "search" for what it is: political repression. It should alarm us that even in democracies lawyers, publishers, and ordinary people are facing retaliation for work involving political principles. https://t.co/q7qWmAnz65
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 21, 2019
According to Snowden, those who know Boye "everyone who knows Gonzalo Boye recognizes the Spanish police's 'search' for what it is: political repression." He says that people should be concerned that "even in democracies lawyers, publishers and ordinary people are facing retaliation for work involving political principles." He ends his tweet with a link to a statement from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), with whom Boye is a partner lawyer.
The ECCHR yesterday stated that "in our assessment [the National Audience's action] is based on the assumed identification of Mr. Boye with his clients’ cause, the Catalan independence movement" and that they believe "the search was conducted under a false pretext and with the aim of discrediting Mr Boye as a lawyer."