The Polish parliamentary committee investigating the purchase and use of Pegasus spyware by the former Conservative (PiS) government has voted to have former PiS justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro incarcerated for 30 days.
The decision on January 31 was because Ziobro failed to turn up to testify at the hearing, despite being brought to do so by police.
The move came under the majority that supports Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Ziobro at the time was in the process of being taken by police from independent broadcaster TV Republika’s studios, where he was being interviewed, to the parliament.
The committee decided to start the meeting before he arrived and voted for him to be detained for 30 days and then ended the meeting.
Following the committee’s decision, parliament will have to vote on lifting Ziobro’s immunity in its full session so a court can decide whether he should be detained.
Ziobro has previously refused multiple summonses from the committee, citing the fact that he was undergoing treatment for cancer.
After December’s vote by parliament to have him forcibly brought to testify, Ziobro argued that his hands were tied by the fact that the Constitutional Court had previously issued an injunction against further committee proceedings.
Therefore, he said, he refused to attend any of its hearings voluntarily, although he stated that he would co-operate with the police if detained.
A Warsaw district court on January 27 ruled that Ziobro be detained and brought before the committee. It ruled in line with the centre-left Tusk government’s opinion that the Constitutional Court was improperly constituted and therefore its decisions were null and void.
“I have consciously come here today so that no one can accuse me of being afraid of anything in the sphere of Pegasus or of actions related to the support of the CBA in the purchase of this system,” Ziobro told TV Republika before the police detained him.
Przemysław Wipler MP, of the right-wing Confederation party annd who is a member of the parliamentary committee investigating Pegasus, claimed on X that the motion on Ziobro’s detention was tabled despite the committee knowing he was already in the parliament building.
“This shows the intention of what is going on here. Nobody wanted to listen to anybody, it was just going to be a political circus,” Wipler said.
Magdalena Sroka MP, who chairs the committee, on February 2 told commercial TV news channel TVN24 the committee voted for Ziobro’s detention to “punish him and make him testify before it”.
She said she feared “he would not have testified” at the hearing on January 31.
Bartosz Lewandowski, an attorney linked to the conservative legal think-tank Ordo Iuris was scathing about Sroka’s comments.
“Detaining witnesses [Ziobro has not been indicted] is purely aimed at ensuring that the investigation can proceed.”
“It is not punishment and cannot be used to extract or force someone to testify against their will”, Lewandowski told portal DoRzeczy.pl.
The previous PiS government purchased Pegasus, an Israeli-made surveillance tool, for use by Poland’s Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA).
The spyware was used in investigating more than 600 individuals, including some opposition politicians, between 2017 and 2022, with each case having been authorised by a judge.
Ziobro, in his interview with TV Republika, defended the use of Pegasus on security grounds arguing that “many serious crimes were not committed because the security services had this instrument”.
The Ziobro case is the latest in a series of attempts by the Tusk government to hold to account officials from the previous PiS administration, with several individuals indicted and detained but so far none convicted.
