São Paulo, July 1, 2026—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes an unprecedented June 30 court decision that sentenced a former judge and an ex-general to five years in prison for illegally spying on independent journalist Mauricio Weibel Barahona as he was investigating corruption in the Chilean army.
Weibel’s investigation, “Milicogate: The Great Theft from the Copper Reserve Fund” was first published in 2015 by The Clinic newspaper. In 2016, Weibel published a book on the same matter called “Treason against Homeland.”The following year, Judge Juan Poblete and General Shafik Nazal fraudulently ordered a wiretap on Weibel, claiming his phone number belonged to a Bolivian migrant they accused of being a foreign agent.
“This sets an important precedent for fighting impunity in cases involving spying on journalists — and not only in Chile,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ Latin America program coordinator. “In the last few years, CPJ has documented illegal government spying on journalists in Mexico and El Salvador. This decision may contribute to achieving justice for them and others in similar cases across the region and globally.”
The Seventh Preliminary Hearing Court of Santiago considered the Chilean government’s obligations to investigate and punish attacks against human rights defenders and journalists, rejecting arguments based on the statute of limitations that are often invoked in cases of state abuses. The sentence is final and cannot be appealed. The defendants also were stripped of their political rights for life.
In an amicus curiae brief filed with the court and reviewed by CPJ, the Global Freedom of Expression initiative at Columbia University emphasized that the case was part of a regional and international context that was “troubling for freedom of expression” due to the illegitimate use of surveillance technologies to monitor the work and private conversations of journalists.