The Supreme Court Prosecutor’s refusal to reopen the wiretapping case file from the archive reinforces the allegations of manipulation of the upper echelons of the judiciary by the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis. This is the third time that an obstacle has been placed at the highest level of the criminal justice system against a thorough investigation of the wiretapping scandal.
And this despite the fact that it is clear, as respected legal experts confirm, that far more evidence has come to light than was available when the notorious Zisis report was written — a report that identified responsibility only among certain “private individuals” and not among political figures — most of it through the hearing proceedings at the Single-Member Court of First Instance that convicted the four private individuals referred for prosecution on the basis of the Zisis report to heavy sentences, and called for the investigation to be expanded to cover other individuals whose role came to light during the trial.
Evidence that was added to what investigative journalism had already brought to light, as well as to the repeated statements of Tal Dilian, convicted at first instance in the case, that his company Intellexa worked exclusively with state entities and that documents exist proving that his company sold the illegal security spyware to the Greek security services. Evidence that the Tzavellas ruling — which also insisted on archiving the case — did not see, but that does not mean it does not exist. Along with new requests from people who fell victim to illegal surveillance, asking for the case to be reopened, including one from a former prime minister, Antonis Samaras.
And of course the Supreme Court Prosecutor chose to continue down the road of willful blindness with regard to the offense of espionage.
Because we must not forget that the question in this case concerns not only the legality or otherwise of the National Intelligence Service intercepts and the subsequent surveillance through the Predator spyware. There is another very serious issue: the content of the surveillance and the recordings. Because we must not forget that ministers, senior military officers, judges handling critical cases, and senior officials of the country’s services were demonstrably monitored. The communications of these individuals — and therefore the recordings made of them — very frequently contain classified information relating to the functioning of the state, foreign policy, defense planning, and security policies. All of this information, when recorded by third parties or when it reaches third parties — whether that means “private individuals” or, through them, the services of other states — constitutes espionage. And yet the Supreme Court Prosecutor did not consider it appropriate to examine even this dimension, which is of critical importance to national security.
And here something must be made clear: the powers of the Supreme Court Prosecutor are very broad. He is the country’s most senior prosecutorial official. He can refer decisions back to the court, he can order the investigation of a case, he can decide that previous rulings — even of the Supreme Court — did not examine all the aspects of a case, were not adequate, and reopen a case file. And obviously he has not merely the ability, but the responsibility and the obligation, if new evidence exists, to open the case and seek prosecutions. In short, if he has now decided to keep the wiretapping case “in the archive,” it is not because his hands are tied by the law. He did it because he chooses to. And in doing so, regardless of his intentions, all he is doing is continuing a cover-up operation that ultimately deprives Greek society of the possibility of seeing fully investigated a case that constitutes an open wound — and which, if it is not clarified, will be tantamount to accepting that “they are listening to us” in general, without rules, and that this does not constitute institutional misconduct.
It is clear that a coordinated operation to conceal political and criminal responsibility for one of the greatest manifestations of institutional misconduct in our country is ongoing. This operation is organized by the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, which once again demonstrates that it has no problem debasing the standing of institutions by engineering their manipulation, as long as it can secure immunity and impunity.
It is clear that we are far from the days when even the prime minister acknowledged that the wiretapping affair was “a shadow over his government.” We have now reached the phase of “you are conspiracy theorists if you talk about illegal wiretapping and you are treasure-hunters if you seek government responsibility.” The phase in which someone substantially implicated in the affair — the then Secretary-General of the Prime Minister, who even had signing authority on matters concerning the National Intelligence Service — comes out and says he “took a bullet for his boss” and that, although he knows, he will never speak. The phase in which an entire political, judicial, and media establishment tries to persuade us that in substance illegal wiretapping never took place, and that anyone who maintains otherwise simply wants to undermine the government.
Except that this establishment system of power is mistaken if it believes that the cover-up it is attempting will continue forever. A possible — and necessary — political change in the country will unlock all existing institutional mechanisms, so that the case can be retrieved once more from the archive, investigated, all the evidence brought to light wherever it is buried, and responsibility — political as well as criminal — assigned however high up it reaches.
On the one hand because a different balance of forces in parliament will also enable the national legislature to make use of the powers it has to investigate cases, to call witnesses, and even to decide on a parliamentary inquiry committee. On the other hand, because a different political situation in the country will also restore to the judiciary its necessary independence, freeing it from its current suffocating embrace by the government, and will allow it to open the case, examine all the evidence it is currently pretending does not exist, and bring prosecutions.
And all of this not for reasons of political revenge and score-settling, but because in our democracy — a democracy formally strong, but in practice fragile — amid the multiple abuses of power that undermine it, no further shadows can be tolerated. Citizens need to see at last the restoration of institutional function, the country’s genuine return to a democratic “normality,” and misconduct treated as such. Because only in this way will they begin once more to have trust — in democracy, and in its institutions.
