PiS MP Zbigniew Ziobro said he was filing a report to the prosecutor's office about a suspected crime in connection with what he said was an illegal attempt to deprive him of liberty for up to 30 days. The parliamentary committee of inquiry into Pegasus requested that Ziobro be detained for questioning.
On Thursday, the parliamentary investigative committee for Pegasus attempted to question the former justice minister for the 6th time; earlier, after he failed to appear for questioning several times, the committee had requested the court to arrest Ziobro for up to 30 days in order to be able to question him. The court did not grant this request; in its opinion, “the committee waived the possibility of questioning the witness, despite the fact that he was brought to the committee” on January 31 – the day of the previous planned hearing.
On Friday, the former head of the Ministry of Justice announced at a press conference that he was sending a notice to the prosecutor's office “about the suspicion of committing a crime in connection with the illegal attempt to deceive him for a period of one month, confirmed by the court”. In Ziobro's opinion, the court found the commission's motion to be unfounded. According to Ziobro, the court also found that it did not have to hear the evidence requested by the former head of the Ministry of Justice, because it “found that the facts presented by the pseudo-commission are untrue and manipulated” and are used to obtain, without basis, consent to his arrest.
“This is the first case since 1989 when it was officially possible to hear, see and read in court that the authorities attempted to deprive a deputy of his liberty in a manipulated and deceitful manner based on fabricated false documents that did not correspond to reality and were lies even when confronted with documents provided by the police and the Marshal's Guard, which were subordinate to the same authorities,” Ziobro said.
This, in his opinion, shows the “fierceness of Donald Tusk and his political environment” who “decided to attempt an illegal, deceitful arrest of the representative of the largest opposition party”, i.e. PiS.
In Ziobro's opinion, these actions are also consistent with the events of Thursday's session of the parliamentary investigative committee, to which he was summoned. This was the sixth attempt to question him. When he failed to appear, the committee informed him that it was filing a motion to the court to impose a fine on him. Ziobro later stated that the committee “was not even able to effectively send the notification on time” – the notice of the summons for questioning had a deadline for collection by the end of the post office business day on Thursday.
Moreover, Ziobro, refusing to appear before the committee, keeps referring to the Constitutional Tribunal's judgment from September last year, which ruled that the Sejm's resolution establishing the committee was unconstitutional. This judgment – like others since March last year – has not been published in the Journal of Laws.
At Thursday's session, the chairwoman of the investigative committee, Magdalena Sroka, said that “there is no doubt that Zbigniew Ziobro was perfectly aware that today's hearing date had been set.” She added that “such information reached him at home on April 7.”
The previous attempt to question Ziobro took place on 31 January. After he failed to appear at the session several times, the committee asked the court to detain the MP and bring him in for questioning. The Sejm lifted his immunity for this purpose, and the District Court in Warsaw agreed to this. The police detained Ziobro on the day of the investigative committee meeting after 10:30 a.m., when he had finished giving an interview at the headquarters of Telewizja Republika. The investigative committee meeting was scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m.; since Ziobro had not been in the session room by that time, the investigative committee deemed the former minister's appearance ineffective and decided to submit a motion to apply a disciplinary penalty of up to 30 days of arrest to him.
On March 31, the Warsaw District Court dismissed the motion to arrest the former head of the Ministry of Justice. Court spokeswoman Judge Anna Ptaszek informed at the time that “the committee withdrew from the possibility of questioning the witness, despite the fact that he was brought to the committee”. Ziobro himself has repeatedly emphasized that he did not resist being arrested on January 31 and assessed that the investigative committee did not want to question him, since it closed the session when he was already on his way there. Moreover, the former Minister of Justice, like other PiS politicians, believes that the Sejm investigative committee is operating illegally and refers to the Constitutional Tribunal's judgment on the unconstitutionality of the establishment of the Pegasus committee.
Trela said on Radio TOK FM on Thursday that Ziobro's next hearing will be scheduled for the end of May or beginning of June.
The commission is investigating whether the use of the Pegasus surveillance software by the government, secret services and police during the PiS government was legal. The commission is also to determine who was responsible for purchasing Pegasus and similar tools for the Polish authorities. According to information provided so far, including by NIK, the Pegasus system was purchased in autumn 2017 for the CBA, with funds coming mainly (PLN 25 million) from the Justice Fund (supervised by the Ministry of Justice). (PAP)
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