A new petition to retrieve the case file related to the telephone wiretapping scandal was submitted today to the Greek Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office by attorney Zacharias Kesses, citing new evidence that he argues appears for the first time in an official court document. According to this evidence, Tal Dilian reportedly acknowledges that his company was solely responsible for selling the Predator spyware to Greek authorities, and that he had no personal involvement in its use in Greece.
Read also: Wiretapping case: Opposition’s request to summon Dilian and Dimitriadis rejected by the Institutions and Transparency Committee
What Zacharias Kesses is demanding in the wiretapping case
Zacharias Kesses is requesting that the founder of Intellexa be summoned to testify as a witness. If this proves impossible due to Dilian’s first-instance conviction in the Predator case, Kesses proposes that five senior executives of the company be examined instead — individuals whose roles were highlighted during the original trial proceedings.
As Mr. Kesses stated — representing victims of the telephone wiretapping — “the value system of my clients and my own compel an unwavering defense of the rule of law, a relentless pursuit of truth, and accountability against every form of cover-up in the wiretapping case.”
In this context, he submitted a new petition for the retrieval and further investigation of the case file, citing a legal pleading filed by the first-instance convicted Tal Dilian before an Israeli court against a Predator victim in Greece, in which Dilian is seeking damages for defamation.
“The value of this new piece of evidence,” he stated, “lies in the fact that for the first time it is recorded in an official court document that Tal Dilian only sold Predator to Greek authorities and had no connection to its use in Greece. The wording of the legal pleading makes it clear, in a manner that leaves no room for misinterpretation, that Tal Dilian — in seeking to establish the validity of his lawsuit — himself distinguishes between the facts he considers true and those he characterizes as false and defamatory.”
Mr. Kesses further argued that “Tal Dilian himself invokes as a factual matter the sale of the Predator surveillance software to Greek state authorities — a fact he does not dispute and describes as ‘entirely lawful.’ In contrast, he considers it defamatory to claim that he was personally involved in the use of Predator for illegal surveillance in Greece, in cooperation with the Greek National Intelligence Service (EYP).”
“Dilian must be called to testify”
On the basis of the above, the attorney stressed that “the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office must immediately take all lawful steps: retrieve the case file, request through international judicial assistance the certified documents from the Israeli proceedings, and evaluate them within the framework of the criminal investigation.”
He further added that the prosecutor’s office “must summon Tal Dilian to testify. If it considers that his credibility is compromised by his status as a defendant, it can instead summon Intellexa’s technical director, its administrative officer, and the company’s three technicians — none of whom have ever testified to date.”
Mr. Kesses also stated that “Mr. Bakelas, as the case handler, is obligated to rise to the occasion, to uphold the integrity of the justice system, and to investigate what is the greatest scandal of Greece’s Third Republic. Anything less will perpetuate an institutional wound.”
When asked about a recent interview given by Grigoris Dimitriadis, Kesses commented that Dimitriadis claimed to know a great deal but chose not to speak. “The right to silence belongs to defendants. Witnesses, however, have a duty to tell the truth,” he noted.
The new petition will be consolidated with the other pending requests before the Supreme Court Prosecutor in connection with the same case — among them one recently filed by former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who has stated that he too was a victim of the Predator malware, and who has called for a full and thorough judicial investigation.
