REPORTS
National Intelligence Service: Surveillance of six senior politicians and military officials
During the parliamentary session of 25 January 2023, the leader of the opposition, Alexis Tsipras, revealed that the National Intelligence Service (EYP) had placed under surveillance six senior political and military officials with senior positions in the government and the armed forces. The privacy of communications had been lifted, he said, from Labour Minister Kostis Hatzidakis, Chief of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff, General Konstantinos Floros, Chief of the Hellenic Army General Staff. Lt. Gen. Charalambos Lalousis, former National Security Advisor Alexandros Diakopoulos, the head of the General Directorate of Armaments Aristides Alexopoulos, as well as the latter’s predecessor in the same position, Theodoros Lagios.
Mr.Tsipras learned of these findings during a meeting with the President of the independent communications privacy authority (ADAE), Christos Rammos. ADAE had conducted an investigation, approaching telecommunications providers to establish beyond doubt whether these persons had indeed been placed under surveillance by the national intelligence service.
Following the revelations, Professor of Constitutional Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and former Deputy Prime Minister, Evangelos Venizelos, argued in a speech that the lifting of the secrecy of communications of senior officials in the armed forces was illegal. Venizelos reasoned that if the surveillance of these persons was legal and conducted for a justified reason, then the persons in question should not have remained in power, noting that the surveillance of senior armed forces personnel raises a major issue of national security as well as one of respect for the rule of law and for the Constitution, which guarantees the absolute inviolability of the confidentiality of communications (Article 19).
Venizelos has also previously argued that the surveillance of MPs and MEPs is illegal; these revelations follow confirmation that leader of opposition party PASOK and MEP Nikos Androulakis was also monitored by the intelligence services.
The national intelligence service, EYP, was brought under the direct supervision of the Prime Minister’s office after New Democracy won the 2019 elections. The Prime Minister’s nephew, Gregory Dimitriadis, was placed as the Prime Minister’s Secretary General and the political head of the National Intelligence Service.
Although Article 19 of the Constitution guarantees the absolute inviolability of the confidentiality of communications, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) under the supervision of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis illegally monitored senior public officials of the government and the armed forces, raising serious issues of national security and the rule of law.
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