Polish ex-justice minister says he suggested Pegasus purchase from Justice Fund
Zbigniew Ziobro, Polish former justice minister, has testified that he was the initiator of the use of Justice Fund for the procurement of the Pegasus spyware, which was used by the Law and Justice (PiS) government against the then opposition and government critics.
On Monday morning, police detained Ziobro after he disembarked a flight from Brussels at Warsaw's Chopin Airport to bring him before the parliamentary commission investigating the former government's use of spyware. The Warsaw court had approved a request for his detention following nine unsuccessful attempts to interview him.
"I was the one who initiated the purchase of this system," the ex-minister testified before the body later on Monday.
Ziobro, who was the administrator of the Justice Fund, earmarked for helping victims of crime, was asked whether he had made an "individual decision" to allocate PLN 25 million (EUR 5.9 mln) from the reserve to purchase Pegasus.
The ex-minister said that he proposed considering the possibility of purchasing the system with the Justice Fund resouces but said that the decision was made by the then deputy justice minister, Michał Wos, who "knew my wishes" in this respect.
He added that he had instructed Wos to verify the legal possibility of such a transfer. "The minister made this assessment and took decisions which, in hindsight, I consider to be fully in accordance with the law, and I would have taken the same decisions," Ziobro concluded.
The commission also inquired whether Ziobro was informed about the negative opinion of the Internal Security Agency (ABW) regarding the legality of the spyware. The former minister did not give a clear answer to this question, but assessed that the ABW's initial comments were due to a lack of access to all information.
"The final conclusions... of the ABW management were that this is a completely secure system, compliant with Polish law, and should be used," he said.
A similar question concerned the negative opinion of the police. Ziobro replied that he was aware of the discussions, which also ultimately ended with a positive opinion.
"The fact that there is an ongoing debate between various authorities on whether a given tool is good or not is the best demonstration of the professionalism of the Polish state," he said.
The Pegasus phone-hacking spyware was secretly bought from the Israeli NSO Group. The system was then illegally used to spy on the then opposition politicians, lawyers and other figures criticising the PiS government, as confirmed in reports from Citizen Lab, a specialised unit at the University of Toronto, Apple, and Amnesty International.
According to Adam Bodnar, the former justice minister in the current government, as many as 578 people, including Polish politicians, were subject to surveillance in 2017-2022.
Ziobro believes the Pegasus commission is illegal, based on a ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal, which on September 10 decided that its establishment by the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, was unconstitutional.
The Constitutional Tribunal has been contested by the current government led by the centrist Civic Coalition (KO) as politicised by the former government of socially conservative PiS.(PAP)
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