Kaczyński called to testify in investigation into Pegasus spyware use in Poland

A newly established parliamentary commission tasked with investigating the use of Pegasus spyware under the former Law and Justice (PiS) government – including against the party’s political opponents – has called PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński as its first witness.

The commission’s chair, Magdalena Sroka, pledged that the body “will establish the group of people responsible for, harmed by and attacked by the Pegasus system, in order to show the mechanism of operation of authorities dreaming of absolute power, authorities who violated the rules of democracy, politicians eavesdropping on lawyers, journalists and normal people”.

A number of other senior PiS politicians – including two former ministers recently jailed for abuse of power and then pardoned by PiS-aligned president Andrzej Duda – were also called to testify before the commission, which started its work today.

The period that the commission will focus on covers almost the entire span of PiS rule, from 16 November 2015, when they took power, to 20 November 2023, a month after the elections in which PiS lost its majority but three weeks before a new ruling coalition took office.

Sroka, the commission’s head, is part of that new ruling coalition, serving as an MP for the centre-right Third Way (Trzecia Droga grouping). She was previously a senior figure in the Agreement (Porozumienie) party that served as a junior coalition partner to PiS until 2021. She today proposed calling Kaczyński as the first witness.

“Jarosław Kaczyński was probably the first person from the [former] ruling party to confirm that such a [Pegasus] system had been purchased officially. I think it will be of great value if we can all hear about [his] knowledge or ignorance [on the matter],” said Sroka, quoted by the Onet news service.

Kaczyński also served as deputy prime minister with oversight of state security from 2020 to 2022.

“As the person who leads the largest party [in parliament], which is in the opposition today, he will be an invaluable witness to our commission,” she added.

A majority of the 11-member commission, which includes four MPs from PiS’s parliamentary caucus, approved the calling of Kaczyński as a witness.

They also called former security services minister Mariusz Kamiński and his deputy Maciej Wąsik, the two PiS MPs recently jailed and then pardoned.

Other witnesses will include Zbigniew Ziobro, who served as justice minister in the PiS government, and Krzysztof Brejza, a member of the new ruling coalition who, in 2019, had his phone surveilled using Pegasus while he was the election campaign manager of what was then Poland’s main opposition party.

The commission, however, rejected requests to question witnesses proposed by PiS, including the former head of the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) Paweł Wojtunik, prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek and Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.

Wrzosek, a prominent critic of the judicial changes introduced under PiS, has previously been identified as a target for surveillance with Pegasus. Other victims included two figures critical of the PiS government, Roman Giertych and Michał Kołodziejczak, who are both now members of the new ruling coalition.

According to media reports from recent weeks, some PiS politicians were spied on with the use of the software during the time that PiS was in power.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said today that the commission’s task must be to “fully explain” the use of Pegasus and “free Poland from the atmosphere of ambiguity” over the issue.

“I don’t want to comment on the dozens and hundreds of conjectures about who PiS was eavesdropping on. The very fact that there is a growing belief in Poland that PiS has been wiretapping everyone, including each other, is something intolerable,” he said, quoted by broadcaster TVN.

However, one of the PiS-nominated members of the commission, called for the body not to “demonise the use of any software by the security services and which allows them to fight criminals”.

Last year, a European Parliament inquiry found that Poland had used Pegasus as part of “a system for the surveillance of the opposition and critics of the government – designed to keep the ruling majority and the government in power”.

Soon after, a commission established by the Polish Senate found that the PiS government’s purchase of Pegasus was illegal and that its use against opposition figures rendered the 2019 elections unfair.

In December, a court ordered state broadcaster TVP to apologise to Brejza and pay him 200,000 zloty in compensation for publishing private messages taken from his phone using Pegasus spyware. During the PiS government, TVP was a party mouthpiece regularly used to attack the opposition.

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Main image credit: Sławomir Kamiński / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.