REPORTS
Accusations and revelations regarding the surveillance of citizens by the National Intelligence Service
On November 14, 2021, the Efimerida ton Syntakton published a report entitled “Citizens under surveillance by the National Intelligence Service“. The report alleged that the National Intelligence Service was monitoring citizens, including “immigration officials, journalists, lawyers, but also people working with refugees,” while “protest rallies of pandemic deniers have also been targeted, where a complete ‘dossier’ on the organizers has been compiled.”
The report revealed internal communications from the National Intelligence Service in which “information was requested about a woman working in the public sector […] on the grounds that she, ‘appears to be an advocate of the labor and human rights of immigrants.. ” In another message, the intelligence services allegedly requested information to gather evidence about a lawyer who was called to defend an immigrant in court.
Equally worrying is that allegedly the intelligence services requested information about a 12-year-old refugee from Syria, who became well known when the French newspaper Le Monde published one of his drawings. According to the newspaper report, the service asked the relevant team to check the information at its disposal; that the 12-year-old is being held in the refugee centre of Kos, and to collect any other information about him.
In fact, the newspaper report revealed that the same internal communication mentions that there is a Greek journalist who is interested in writing a feature about the refugee child whose drawing had been published. The communication includes the journalist’s personal data (name and ID number), as well as information about an official of the International Organization for Migration, with whom the journalist allegedly came into contact with in the context of his report.
Stavros Malihoudis, a journalist with the Solomon team and the French News Agency, later revealed that he was the journalist to whom the intelligence services’ message was referring to.
The government reacted with inconsistent statements:
On November 24, Minister of State Giorgos Gerapetritis, responding to a letter from the French News Agency, stated that “Greece fully adheres to the values of a democratic society and the rule of law [and] consequently there is no surveillance of journalists in Greece.”
As can be seen from the statement by the Minister of State (and professor of Constitutional Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) George Gerapetritis, the principles of democratic society and the rule of law are incompatible with the monitoring of journalists and civil society by the secret services.
The defence of human rights, activism, journalism and social participation are not a threat to national security.
Nevertheless, the revelations by the Efimerida ton Syntakton,which were not directly refuted, raise the question of whether surveillance by the National Intelligence Service,which is now under the supervision of the Prime Minister, is compatible with the operation of democracy and the rule of law in Greece.
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