Eight victims of Greece’s phone surveillance scandal have taken their fight to the civil courts, filing a lawsuit in Athens that seeks 7.6 million euros in damages from the people they accuse of orchestrating and enabling the hacking of their phones with Predator spyware.
The suit was filed at Athens’ Multimember Court of First Instance by attorney Zacharias Kesses. It opens a new front in a case that until now had been fought mainly in the criminal courts. All eight plaintiffs appear on the list of people monitored through Predator, and their lawyer says further claims will follow in the coming weeks.
Predator is a spyware that silently infects a target’s phone and hands its operators access to messages, calls and data. Its use against journalists, politicians and public officials in Greece has already produced criminal convictions.
Who is being sued
The plaintiffs are not only pursuing the four private individuals convicted at the first criminal trial, who received multiyear prison sentences. Their claims, against 13 defendants in all, also target employees of Intellexa, the company behind Predator, whose role came to light during the criminal proceedings on the initiative of the trial panel led by presiding judge Nikos Askianakis and prosecutor Dimitris Pavlidis. Also named are the holder of the prepaid SIM card used to send infected messages to Nikos Androulakis, leader of the socialist opposition party PASOK, and an employee at a mobile phone store who is alleged to have had ties to the National Intelligence Services (EYP).
One feature of the suit stands out. For the first time, the claimants include people who took part in the earlier criminal trial only as witnesses rather than as parties supporting the prosecution.
The plaintiffs
Among the new claimants is Pinelopi Miniati, a former senior Hellenic Police officer who once led the force’s Directorate of Forensic Investigations (DEE) and handled dozens of serious cases.
The others are journalist Thanasis Koukakis; Artemis Seaford, a political scientist with graduate training at Stanford who has worked since 2020 in cybersecurity and online user safety; Antonia Primpa, a former assistant to Greek member of the European Parliament Stelios Kympouropoulos who also served as a special adviser at the telecommunications and postal secretariat of the infrastructure and transport ministry from May 2014 to February 2015; two officers from the National Intelligence Service (EYP), Angeliki Rousou and Zoi Maria Sakkali; lawyer Ioannis Fytilis, who supported the prosecution at the criminal trial; and journalist Spyros Sideris, whose surveillance is disclosed for the first time in the filing.
How the phones were infected
In the multi-page filing, the plaintiffs set out step by step how the operation was built and how each of their phones came to be compromised. In many cases, they say, the malicious link was dressed up to look like the ones Greek citizens received during the pandemic in order to book COVID-19 vaccination appointments. The predator victims argue that the methods used to conceal the spyware show their targeting was deliberate rather than accidental.
The national security angle
Miniati’s section of the lawsuit carries particular weight. Her account, the plaintiffs argue, could prompt the civil court to forward the file back to the prosecutors and bring an espionage charge back into the picture.
The former Hellenic Police officer described the tainted messages as a Trojan horse. Because of her role, she said, the attackers had access not only to her own data and information but could monitor what was said in her meetings and calls with prosecutors, police leadership, embassy and international organization officials, senior officers and the heads of independent authorities.
In her official duties, she noted, she handled everything from homicides and property crimes to matters of national security. In 2021 alone, as head of the DEE, she says she oversaw investigations into espionage on the islands of Rhodes and Samos, some of it carried out with drones, as well as cases tied to domestic and international terrorist groups, including ISIS. Much of that work, she added, involved examining digital devices, checking the authenticity of travel and other documents, and identifying people through biometric data.
Sideris made a similar point about the sensitivity of what was exposed. During the period in question, he said, he was working as founder and director of the Independent Balkan News Agency, a news organization covering the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on foreign policy and diplomacy. That work, he says, brought him into regular contact with senior officials across the region, among them former Greek foreign minister Nikos Kotzias, North Macedonia’s Zoran Zaev, Bulgaria’s Boyko Borissov, Cyprus’s Nikos Anastasiades and Nikos Christodoulides, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, Albania’s Edi Rama and Turkey’s Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, among others.
What comes next
Kesses said the claims rest on facts established by the recent criminal conviction and on extensive evidence from Greek and international investigations. New material to be introduced at the hearing, he said, is likely to force the civil court to hand the file to the criminal justice system to investigate possible felonies.
The lawsuits, he added, lay out how the network of companies and people behind Predator was organized and who played what role. The goal, he said, is to hold everyone involved to account and to compensate the victims, both in Greece and across Europe.
The case is scheduled to be heard on April 7, 2027.
