Police still tailing vehicles and tapping
phones!
Seven months after police presented their final
reports, activists can prove that surveillance
operations are still taking place. Animal campaigners
arranged over the phone to meet with VGT's Martin
Balluch twenty hours later to check whether
pheasant breeding pens, outside of Vienna, were
being used illegally.
It wasn't only the campaigners who
turned up, but also two cars each with two people
inside. The campaigners were followed around
the area by the cars and to the motorway back
to Vienna.
Martin Balluch: "Based on this evidence
I can only assume that I have had my phone tapped
and been observed since my release from remand
custody one-and-a-half years ago! At the beginning
of this year, the flat I have been living in
since my release was broken into. Strangely
nothing was taken and the only damage was that
the security chain on the door had been forced.
There is nothing in the court records about
this continued observation, which we have now
proved to exist. Defence lawyers tell me that
police are probably compiling parallel files
which are being withheld and this is where the
authorization for surveillance will be found.
This, however, is clearly illegal. But since
when did police care about the law in this case!?"
Police tap judge's phone!
It seems that anyone who expresses a positive
attitude towards animals can expect harassment
from the special commission. So desperate are
they for evidence of organised crime that they
have even targeted a judge, tapping her phone
and paying her an unannounced visit. It transpires
that the judge had, some years ago, rightly
acquitted some anti-hunt protesters and as police
were sifting through a campaigner's private
emails they found some correspondence containing
positive comments about her. This was enough
for them to start listening to her calls on
the phone and paying her an unexpected visit.
A Green Party MP's calls have also been tapped
by police. Police claim that based on an overheard
private call, she warned campaigners about surveillance
measures.
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