A group of Greek journalists and government officials on Thursday testified to a European Parliamentary inquiry about the “use of spyware in Greece” – part of a Committee of Inquiry on the use of Pegasus and equivalent spyware in Greece, Balkan Insight reports.

The PEGA invited the Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis, who was targeted with Predator, Stavros Malichoudis, a victim of wire-tapping, and Eliza Triantafillou, an investigative journalist at the Greek media outlet Inside story, to share their experiences as targets and investigators of surveillance.

However, Koukakis was put out of the Investigative Committee after the Greek parliamentary majority voted against a proposal to summon the journalist, the main protagonist of the wiretapping scandal, as a witness.

“The PEGA committee has shown a sincere interest in the case of surveillance in Greece and I am sure that it will exert a lot of pressure to highlight aspects of the case that have not yet been clarified. I think this will become clear when the committee visits Greece,” Koukakis had earlier told BIRN.

Koukakis discovered that his phone had been infected with Predator and that he was being wiretapped as well.

In November 2021, BIRN contributor Malichoudis found that he was among a number of journalists, lawyers dealing with refugee cases, civil servants and anti-vaxxers being wiretapped by the Greek National Intelligence Service, NIS.

Koukakis and Malichoudis both believe they were targeted because of their work.

“We received questions from all MEPs from all parties, who even asked for our opinion in which direction they would move legislatively regarding spyware’s use,” Triantafyllou told BIRN of the hearing.

Triantafyllou, together with her colleague Tasos Telloglou, from Inside Story, revealed the “Predator-gate scandal” in Greece. Triantafyllou stressed that in Greece official investigations into privacy violations seemed to proceed slowly – while investigations into leaks to the media advanced much faster.

She added that spyware provider Intellexa’s activities should be investigated as well.

In the meantime, Ta Nea, a Greek media outlet, wrote that the records of the monitoring of Koukakis and Nikos Androulakis, head of the left-wing PASOK-KINAL, the third-largest party in the Greek parliament, almost fell victim to Predator surveillance software, and have been destroyed by NIS. Androulakis was not invited to the hearing.

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