Former ruling PiS party refuses to testify before committee investigating its use of Pegasus spyware

Poland’s former ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has announced that its politicians will not give testimony before a parliamentary commission investigating the use of Pegasus spyware under the PiS government.

The party’s chairman, Jarosław Kaczyński, who was himself the first witness called before the commission, says they must comply with an order issued last week by the Constitutional Tribunal (TK) – a body widely seen as being under PiS influence – to suspend the operation of the commission.

However, the head of the commission – a figure from the ruling coalition that replaced PiS in power in December – says that the TK’s order is unlawful. She has pledged to continue the commission’s work and to apply to court for punishment of witnesses who refuse to appear.

Last week, the TK – whose chief justice Julia Przyłębska is a close personal associate of Kaczyński – issued an interim order for the Pegasus commission to cease activity until the TK rules on a motion brought by PiS MPs who argued that the commission was established in violation of the constitution.

In response, Kaczyński said that, while he had already given testimony to the commission before the TK order was issued, now “as a lawyer I have to say that we obviously have no right to participate in this [process]”.

Yesterday, the commission called Mikołaj Pawlak – who served in the justice ministry under the PiS government – to give testimony. However, he refused to take the oath, saying he “does not consider today’s meeting to be a parliamentary committee meeting”, and then walked out of the room.

“For the sake of the committee, I have prevented the committee from taking unlawful statements,” Pawlak later told reporters.

But the head of the commission, Magdalena Sroka, says that they will continue their work because the TK’s order is invalid. She also threatened to have Pawlak arrested if he continues to refuse to testify.

“Immediately after we received correspondence from Przyłębska, we asked the [parliamentary] Bureau of Research for a position on this matter,” she explained. “The position is clear: the Constitutional Tribunal is exceeding its competences and cannot issue an order in this specific case.”

“We will continue to work and call witnesses,” she added, quoted by the 300Polityka news service. “Any witness who fails to appear when summoned will be subject to an application to court for punishment for failure to appear or testify.”

“The fear we see today on the part of PiS politicians means one thing: we are going in the right direction,” said Sroka.

However, Kaczyński yesterday reiterated that his party will “abide by the TK’s order” and said that anyone who does not is “sowing anarchy, breaking up the Polish state, [carrying out] anti-Polish work”.

When a new government led by Donald Tusk took office in December, it pledged to investigate alleged abuses of Pegasus – a powerful Israeli-made tool that allows monitoring of mobile phones – under the PiS government, which was accused of using it for political purposes against its opponents.

In February, a special parliamentary committee was established to look into use of the spyware. Last month Poland’s justice minister Adam Bodnar disclosed that almost 600 people in Poland were targeted for surveillance with Pegasus between 2017 and 2022.

Separately to the parliamentary commission, prosecutors have also been investigating the issue. Last month they sent notices to 31 people informing them that they had been granted witness status in the case investigating the abuse of power and breach of duty by public officials in the use of Pegasus.

Tusk’s government has regularly clashed with the TK, which it notes contains judges unlawfully appointed under PiS. Last month, the speaker of parliament, Szymon Hołownia, announced that he would ignore an order by the TK not to proceed with putting the central bank governor, another Kaczyński associate, on trial.

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Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Alicja Ptak

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