Greece’s parliament convened a high-stakes hearing on Wednesday into the country’s Predator spyware scandal, as the Institutions and Transparency Committee summoned the director of the National Intelligence Service and the Supreme Court prosecutor to testify, only for the latter to formally refuse to appear.
The closed-door session brought together Themistoklis Demiris, director of the National Intelligence Service (EYP), and Minister of State Akis Skertsos, to address the intelligence agency’s role in the surveillance operations. The hearing was shut to the public on national security grounds, in keeping with standard practice under the ruling New Democracy government for hearings of this nature. PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis, one of the most prominent confirmed targets of the surveillance operations and among the most vocal critics of the government’s handling of the scandal, is attending the hearing.
Supreme Court Prosecutor Konstantinos Tzavellas had been scheduled to testify at 1 p.m. over his April 27 decision not to retrieve the Predator spyware case from the prosecutorial archive for re-examination, ruling that evidence cited by an Athens criminal court did not meet the legal threshold required under the Greek Code of Criminal Procedure to justify reopening it. Tzavellas, however, chose not to appear, sending instead a formal letter to the committee chairman, which he also copied to the Speaker of Parliament.
In the letter, Tzavellas argued that compelling a Supreme Court prosecutor to appear before parliament to answer for a judicial decision is incompatible with the constitutional principle of separation of powers. He grounded his refusal in a 2011 Supreme Court ruling concerning then-prosecutor Ioannis Tentas, which established that a Supreme Court prosecutor “cannot be called to parliament to provide answers on a jurisdictional ruling.” He further argued that his summons under Article 43, Paragraph 1 of the Parliamentary Rules of Procedure “is incompatible with the constitutional principle of separation of powers,” and added that the committee’s request was framed in vague terms, covering matters that were not sufficiently specified.
The refusal drew sharp criticism. Zacharias Kesses, an attorney representing a number of surveillance targets, called Tzavellas’s decision not to appear before parliament “sad and representative of the negative way he has chosen to be remembered.” He described the invocation of separation of powers as an act of the utmost hypocrisy from a prosecutor who, in his view, had acted in step with the executive and helped suppress the investigation. Kesses said Tzavellas’s handling of the case had defied logic, that he had ignored clear evidence, and had conducted himself in a manner that, as Kesses put it, even defense lawyers would not have dared.
Androulakis presses EYP chief on compliance and transparency
At the committee hearing, Androulakis praised Demiris for appearing before the committee, drawing a pointed contrast with Tzavellas, who had sent a letter in his place. He described the prosecutor’s absence as unjustifiable for a senior state official, arguing that a prosecutor of his standing is obliged not only to protect judicial independence but also to support the functioning of parliament. Androulakis noted that Tzavellas had himself signed off on surveillance warrants while declining to appear before the accountability committee.
Androulakis also expressed strong displeasure at the EYP’s failure to comply with Council of State ruling 465/2024, issued by Greece’s Supreme Administrative Court, which requires intelligence services to give surveillance targets access to the full warrant documentation relating to their monitoring. He said that in his own case, the communications privacy watchdog ADAE had provided him only with the reference number of the relevant order, with the service refusing to release any further information. He called on Demiris to hand over the full warrant file immediately and pressed him to explain on what legal basis the agency was continuing to withhold it, given that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had himself stated during a 2023 televised debate that there had been no national security justification for monitoring Androulakis. He warned that he was prepared to pursue legal action against all those responsible, including the EYP director personally.
Androulakis closed by asking Demiris to clarify what he meant by references to the “difficult conditions” under which he had taken over the service, and recalled that he had previously requested security checks on the mobile phones of ministers and members of parliament to protect them from illegal surveillance software, without receiving any response. “I see more hypocrisy than concern for national security,” he concluded, addressing the EYP director.
Tzavellas refusal follows a pattern established by his predecessors. The same constitutional argument was deployed in August 2024, when the Supreme Court rejected a parliamentary request to summon then-prosecutor Georgia Adeilini and deputy prosecutor Achilleas Zisis, both of whom had handled key aspects of the surveillance investigation. Similar requests in early 2024, seeking information on disciplinary proceedings against other judicial officials involved in the case, met the same fate.
