Polish justice minister requests that predecessor be forcibly brought to testify in spyware investigation

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Adam Bodnar, Poland’s prosecutor general and justice minister, has requested that his predecessor under the former Law and Justice (PiS) government, Zbigniew Ziobro, be detained and forcibly brought to give testimony to a parliamentary committee investigating the use of Pegasus spyware under PiS.

Ziobro has so far been refusing to appear before the committee on health grounds – because he is undergoing treatment for cancer – but also because the constitutional court has deemed the committee to be unlawfully formed.

On Friday afternoon, the prosecutor general’s office announced that Bodnar had submitted a motion to the speaker of parliament, Szymon Hołownia, requesting that the chamber “give its consent to detain and forcibly bring Zbigniew Ziobro…to a meeting of the parliamentary Pegasus investigative committee”.

PG Adam Bodnar przekazał dzisiaj do Marszałka Sejmu RP Szymona Hołowni wniosek o wyrażenie przez Sejm zgody na zatrzymanie i przymusowe doprowadzenie posła na Sejm Zbigniewa Ziobry na posiedzenie Sejmowej Komisji Śledczej ds. Pegasusa.https://t.co/sH7JL80Hbu

— Prokuratura (@PK_GOV_PL) November 22, 2024

Because of the legal immunity Ziobro enjoys as an MP, the authorities require the permission of parliament to bring him into detention. It is the prosecutor general who has exclusive competence to issue such a request.

The Pegasus committee itself had asked Bodnar to request that Ziobro be forcibly brought before it. The prosecutor general’s office said it had found the committee’s application to be justified.

It noted that the committee had “exhausted [all] possibilities…for conducting the examination of Zbigniew Ziobro as a witness” and that Ziobro had already been fined by a court for failing to appear.

Ziobro’s “unjustified failure to appear when summoned by the body…justifies the departure from the constitutional principle of the physical inviolability of an MP”, wrote Bodnar’s office.

 

Shortly afterwards, the chancellery of the Sejm, the more powerful lower house of parliament, announced that it had received Bodnar’s motion, which had been sent for “urgent analysis” by the legal department. “Speaker Szymon Hołownia has given the case the highest priority.”

The Pegasus committee was established in February this year, two months after PiS was replaced by a new government. It was tasked with investigating a range of alleged irregularities in the purchase and use of Pegasus spyware during PiS’s time in power.

According to the current government, almost 600 people were surveilled using Pegasus between 2017 and 2022, including in many cases political opponents of PiS. Among them was the election campaign manager of what was then Poland’s main opposition party.

Pegasus spyware was used to surveil 578 people under the former PiS government, reports the justice minister.

Though many targets were legitimate, there were also cases where Pegasus was used against figures „inconvenient” for PiS, says another minister https://t.co/JBxMTeUSxR

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 16, 2024

The first witness to appear before the committee was PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński. However, subsequently, figures linked to PiS refused to appear because of an interim order by the Constitutional Tribunal (TK) for the body to temporarily halt its activity.

However, the committee has ignored that order, arguing that the TK – a body filled with PiS-era appointees – is itself unlawfully composed. It has also ignored a final ruling by the TK in September that deemed the committee to have been established in violation of the constitution.

Ziobro has been called to appear before the committee four times, reports news website Onet. The most recent summons came after the committee obtained an expert opinion stating that Ziobro – who is undergoing treatment for cancer – can testify under certain conditions.

The constitutional court has ruled that a commission investigating the use of Pegasus spyware under the former government is unconstitutional.

But the head of the commission says the ruling is not binding because it involved an illegally appointed judge https://t.co/q7xaazx72E

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 10, 2024

However, Ziobro did not appear as requested and failed to provide any formal justification. That prompted the committee’s chairwoman, Magdalena Sroka, an MP from the ruling coalition, to ask Bodnar to request that Ziobro be forcibly brought to testify.

Ziobro has not responded to today’s developments. However, earlier this month he told broadcaster wPolsce24 that appearing before a committee that has been unlawfully created would “legitimise crimes”. He claimed that, if the committee were reformed in a legal manner, he would willingly appear before it.

One of Ziobro’s party colleagues, Beata Kempa, today accused Bodnar of “bullying the opposition” and playing “primitive games” in his actions against his predecessor.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.



Main image credit: Ministerstwo Sprawiedliwości (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.