Tag: greece

Cyber-Attack Hits Greece’s ‘Documento’ After Report on Fraudster’s Wife

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Greek media group Documento’s two websites, Documentonews.gr and Koutipandoras.gr, were subjected to distributed denial-of-service DDoS cyber-attacks on Monday as a result of which the servers went down, and users experienced connectivity problems. 

The hackers buffeted the websites one day after the publication of a new report on Yasam Ayavefe’s wife and her connections to the Greek underworld. 

Earlier, Balkan Insight and Greek media outlets Solomon and Inside Story reported on how Ayavefe was awarded honorary Greek citizenship in 2022 despite the fact that in 2017 he was convicted of defrauding online gamblers in his home country, and in 2019 was arrested in Greece while trying to cross the border into Bulgaria on a false Greek passport. 

Last Sunday, journalist Marios Aravantinos revealed that a Greek criminal organization issued Ayavefe’s wife a fake ID. 

The organisation made fake identity cards and passports, mainly for citizens from Albania or from countries of the former Soviet Union who were involved in some illegal activity. The case was reported to the authorities in December 2021 but Ayavefe was still granted honorary citizenship.

“Documento is the fourth media outlet to come under attack after publishing news about this Turkish man. There is a pattern; whether the perpetrator is the same person remains to be proven. We express our concern,” Aravantinos told BIRN. 

BIRN’s Greek partner media outlet Solomon’s and Inside Story’s websites came under a DDoS attack from hackers last September. “The attack started on Saturday at 7.30 am. That’s when the alarms went off, and around eight, we had already started to react. It was a fierce battle; I never experienced a fight like that,” an IT security expert said about the BIRN attack.  “At one point on Saturday, we had 35 million different IP connections from all over the world. The site was brought down by the number of connections,” he said.

MEPS Quiz Commission on BIRN-Solomon Report on Greek Surveillance Systems

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Members of the European Parliament sent written questions to the European Commission on September 16 about the EU-funded “Centaur” and “Hyperion” surveillance systems deployed in reception areas in Greece. Their questions came after BIRN and Greek investigative outlet Solomon published a joint investigation on this on September 9.

BIRN and Solomon revealed in “Asylum Surveillance Systems Launched in Greece without Data Safeguards” that the “Centaur” and “Hyperion” systems were crafted and initially implemented with funds from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility – without prior recruitment of a Data Protection Officer at the Ministry of Migration and Asylum, a requirement under the GDPR, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, to ensure adequate oversight. 

Nor were mandatory Data Protection Impact Assessments, DPIA, conducted in the design phase.

Tineke Strik, a member of the Group of the Greens, one of the eight MEPs who signed the questions to the Commission, published it yesterday on her Twitter account. 

“EU funding of surveillance technology used on migrants in violation of fundamental rights must stop,” Strik said. 

The MEPs asked the Commission how much money the EU spent on the two surveillance systems, from which funds this came, and how much funding has been or will be provided for similar systems. 

BIRN and Solomon established that the planning of Hyperion and Centaur began in 2020. The Hyperion system monitors movement in and out of state-run asylum camps. Centaur deploys behavioral analysis algorithms and transmits CCTV and drone footage to a control room inside the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum. 

Humanitarian organisations say the two surveillance systems violate asylum seekers’ fundamental rights and freedoms. 

The MEPs said the Greek government was clearly unwilling or unable to conduct an “independent investigation” following allegations of non-compliant expenditure of EU funds in violation of fundamental rights. 

“What is the Commission’s assessment of compliance with fundamental rights, and how is the Commission investigating this?” they asked.

“Is the Commission taking action to reject cost reimbursement or retract funding for the Centaur and Hyperion projects? What measures are being taken to prevent future EU-funding of projects in violation of fundamental rights?” they added. 

Greek Arrest Warrant Against Journalist Whistleblower Condemned

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The International Press Institute IPI, the Journalists’ Union of Athens Daily Newspapers, ESIEA, and the journalist himself have condemned the Greek Supreme Court’s arrest warrant against the TV journalist and publisher Petros Kousoulos.

The Supreme Court’s Prosecutor issued an arrest warrant against Kousoulos for publishing confidential documents on the National Intelligence Service NIS’s surveillance of his newspaper MPAM.

MPAM reported that the NIS wiretapped the telephone conversations of two former officials during the first half of the left-wing SYRIZA-ANEL’s government in 2016.

The wiretapping was about the transfer to a company of Qatari interests of an entire area in the mountains of Zakynthos; a scandal that was widely known at the time, but which Greek media did not cover.

Kousoulos himzelf said it was “unthinkable that in 2022, in a well-organized country like Greece, a journalist would be prosecuted for simply doing his job. I was surprised at the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office, which instead of shedding light on the case and finding the real culprits, issued a warrant for my arrest. All this is a violation of the freedom of the press.”

“We condemn the order of the arrest of Petros Kousoulos,” said a press release by ESIEA, announcing that it will seek a meeting with the Prosecutor to discuss all matters concerning journalists.

Greece is embroiled in a wiretapping scandal, nicknamed “predator gate”. The Supreme Court has not investigated who used and sold the illegal spyware “predator”. Instead, it issued a warrant against a journalist who revealed the state surveillance, which worries Greek journalists.

“I find it unthinkable that in 2022, in a well-organized country like Greece, a journalist would be prosecuted for simply doing his job. I was surprised at the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office, which instead of shedding light on the case and finding the real culprits, issued a warrant for my arrest. All this is a violation of the freedom of the press,” Kousoulos told BIRN on Friday.

“At a time when the political and social life of the country is shaken by the revelations about the scandal of government surveillance, the Prosecutor’s Office spends its time hunting journalists, instead of standing firm in its institutional role and investigating who orchestrated the wiretapping scandal,” Vangelis Triantis, a legal editor at the Greek media outlet Documento, told BIRN.

“The attempted criminalization of journalism aims at intimidating those journalists who in future make similar revelations about the wiretapping scandal. The journalist’s job is to publicize and inform public opinion,” added Triantis.

IPI Europe Advocacy Officer Jamie Wiseman told BIRN: “The initiation of an arrest warrant for a newspaper publisher over a journalistic report in an EU member state is an extremely serious issue, one which deserves scrutiny and raises immediate concerns for press freedom, especially at a time when Greece is already in the spotlight internationally.”

“While the publication of information from confidential documents about state surveillance is clearly a sensitive matter, IPI urges judicial authorities in Greece to proceed with utmost caution and with full respect for the values of public interest journalism and the freedom of the press,” he added.

A Range of Digital Rights Violations Disrupts the Region

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Struggling to collect points and voters ahead of upcoming general elections, politicians and political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina perpetrated numerous digital rights violations.

In North Macedonia and Hungary, BIRN monitoring recorded a spread of fake news by media as well as by organised troll networks, while various forms of cyberattacks targeted state institutions and the media in Romania, Hungary and Bosnia.

Warmongering and hate speech as campaign tools in Bosnia

On July 26, at a gathering organized by the main Bosniak party, the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, the party leader, Bakir Izetbegović gave an inflammatory speech which drew condemnation from social media users and politicians.

In his speech, the SDA leader recalled Bosnia’s military strength in the event of a “worst-case scenario”, saying: “We’ve counted ourselves and how many hunters we have, and how many young people, and how many instructors we have on drones, and so on. I won’t go further, but just so you know,” Izetbegović said. The video of the speech was posted on the official page of the SDA and widely shared.


Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Not Pictured) at the West Bank City of Ramallah, 29 August 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/ALAA BADARNEH

Many politicians responded by condemning the rhetoric. Milorad Dodik, Serbian member of the state presidency and leader of the main Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, wrote on Twitter: “No one will count us Serbs, not even Muslims, but they should know that there are enough of us.” His statement also sparked hate speech from many social media users as well as warmongering and threatening rhetoric.

The international community’s overseer in Bosnia, the Office of the High Representative, OHR, Christian Schmidt, condemned both Izetbegović speech and Dodik’s reaction.

Women politicians face misogynistic, gender-based insults

As BIRN’s recent research on online gender-based online violence and women’s rights in the Balkans showed, women in politics and women with public profiles are regularly targeted with harassment and gender-based attacks, frequently by their male counterparts, as was demonstrated by BIRN’s monitoring recorded in the second-half of July, particularly in Bosnia.


People participate in a peaceful march on the occasion of International Women’s Day in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 08 March 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR

At Sarajevo Canton Assembly, parliamentarians subjected Sabina Ćudić, a representative of Naša stranka (Our Party) and Aleksandra Nikolić, Minister of Science, Higher Education and Youth in Sarajevo Canton, to misogynistic and sexist insults and gender-based attacks.

A recording from the session shows Dževad Poturak, of the Alliance for a Better Future party, SBB, commenting on Nikolić’s dress. Just one day earlier, Ćudić shared a video from the session which shows representatives of the SDA and the Democratic Front, DF, making misogynistic comments about her, mainly about her physical appearance.

Vildana Bešlija, of Naša stranka, after reacting to the misogynistic insults at the session of the assembly, was herself subjected to online harassment. After condemning the sexism and misogyny in the Federation entity parliament and writing about it on social media, Bešlija published the sexist and misogynist insults that she herself had received in the form of online private messages.

After these latest gender-based attacks on female politicians, the Gender Equality Agency of Bosnia issued guidelines on the topic for politicians, parties and legislative bodies in the country.

Cyberattacks against media on rise across region

StirileProTV, one of the most widely read news sites in Romania, was hit with a cyberattack. On July 25, Romania’s National Cybersecurity Directorate warned that trolls are spreading fake news on websites which mimic the visual identity of StirileProTV. This is not only an attack on the media but a danger to the users who access the cloned websites. The Cybersecurity Directorate said cybercriminals are drawing in potential victims to steal their bank card details and personal information under the guise of investments in cryptocurrencies.

Just a few days before, an online portal in Bosnia and Herzegovina was subjected to a hacker attack. The editor-in-chief of Buka, Aleksandar Trifunović, said administrators of the portal’s Facebook page were unable to edit posts, upload or perform any other action on the page as a result. Buka has come under dozens of similar attacks on its webpage, however this seems to be the first attack on its Facebook page.

Similarly, in Hungary, the website of Mandiner.hu, a right-wing, pro-government media outlet, was hacked on July 23.  After articles on the portal appeared with a rainbow-coloured background on the day of Budapest Pride, the outlet told readers that this was a result of another hacker attack.

Wrongful processing of citizens’ personal data in Romania, Bosnia

In Romania, millions of vaccinated citizens received WhatsApp and SMS messages warning them about the expiry of their COVID-19 vaccination certificates.

Andrei Baciu, secretary of state in the Health Ministry, debunked this misinformation on Facebook. However, while the false news campaign was concerning in itself, such cases also constitute a violation of citizens’ right to privacy and wrongful processing of personal data, especially sensitive data such as health records.


Two Romanian elderly women rest after getting immunized near the entrance of a Covid-19 Marathon Vaccination For Life II center that is organized at Children Palace venue in Bucharest, Romania, 29 October 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/ROBERT GHEMENT

Just a month after cybercriminals targeted Romanian taxpayers with malicious emails which mimicked the identity of the National Tax Agency, the country saw a new phishing campaign in the second half of July, once again copycatting the Tax Agency.

The warning came from the tax agency itself after thousands of citizens received emails containing malicious attachments or URLs. It is not known if Lokibot, a Trojan-type malware used in June’s phishing campaign was behind this attack as well.

Meanwhile, in Bosnia, the SDA party carried out public promotion and paid public advertising through the telecom operator BH Telecom, via SMS messages asking users to vote for SDA leader Bakir Izetbegovic in the October elections for the state Presidency. The Central Election Commission of Bosnia on July 22 established that the SDA paid for SMS messages to be sent to thousands of users and fined it 1,000 BAM (around 500 euros).

However, while the Central Elections Commission fined the party for paid political advertising before the official start of the election campaign, such practice also constitutes wrongful processing of citizens’ personal data.

Fake news campaigns in North Macedonia and Hungary; Romania takes action

The second half of July saw the continued spread of false news by different actors across the region.

In North Macedonia, several online news portals published unverified claims stating that former state official Dragi Raskovski, who is now under house arrest pending an ongoing investigation against him, was vacationing in Greece.

As a part of the court procedure, Raskovski’s passport was confiscated by the authorities, but the news portals claimed that he was at a Greek resort after publishing an alleged photo of him and his family. However, the man in the photos has spoken out and publically asked the media not to confuse him with Raskovski.

Meanwhile, an article by a fake news portal is among the four most popular online Hungarian articles on Facebook in July.

Reports suggest that a coordinated troll network may be behind this, as the Facebook page of the portal experienced an unnatural spike in interactions after the war started in Ukraine. According to the analysis, since then the average monthly interactions per follower have skyrocketed, with the current metric being 233 times the previous level.

BIRN monitoring also recorded noteworthy responses by the authorities. On July 21, Romania’s Audiovisual Council withdrew the broadcasting license of News Romania, a television and online media outlet whose editorial management is led by Remus Radoi, a known mobster. The decision was taken after the Council fined the media outlet more than 13 times in the last six months for spreading misinformation about the COVID pandemic as well as for spreading pro-Russian propaganda on the war in Ukraine.

Greek Politician Complains of Targeting by Surveillance Software

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Nikos Androulakis, head of PASOK-KINAL, the third-largest party in the Greek parliament, almost fell victim to Predator surveillance software recently, for which reason he has filed an indictment to the Supreme Court, his party said Tuesday.

PASOK-KINAL said Androulakis received a text message with a link on his phone that read: “Let’s look at the matter a little more seriously, man, we have something to win.”

Adroulakis did not click on the link, and his device was not infected.

“It is a case that raises reasonable concerns and questions about what exactly is happening in the political system, in Greek democracy; who are those who are hiding behind and tried to steal personal data and trap the mobile phone of the political leader of the third party of the Greek parliament?” Thanasis Glavinas, director of PASOK-KINAL’s parliamentary group, told BIRN.

In April, two journalists of the investigative media outlet Inside Story, Tasos Telloglou and Eliza Triantafyllou revealed that another journalist, Thanasis Koukakis, was spied on by Predator software for at least three months.

Inside Story revealed that 50 websites of Greek interest were intended to infect the mobile phones of targets who speak Greek, and that targets included both journalists but also ordinary citizens.

The National Transparency Authority, established by the current government, launched an investigation into Koukaki’s case.

But the report said that the government had nothing to do with the surveillance of Koukakis since neither the police nor the National Intelligence Service had purchased or used this or similar spyware.

“The report was delivered to Koukakis last week, three months later, and it appears that some elements were not checked at all,” Telloglou told BIRN.

Inside Story’s newest investigation discloses that the National Transparency Authority did not examine the bank accounts of the companies Koukakis had filed, which appear connected to the security services; it did not examine the activities of the Cypriot companies connected to the software producer or dealing with the Greek state.

“The Greek government has multiple times denied having or using Predator, but has failed so far to find who is using the spyware against targets in Greece, which raises concerns about the protection of democracy and civil rights,” Thodoris Chondrogiannos, reporter at Reporters United, told BIRN.

Reporters United’s investigation into surveillance in Greece revealed that business people with whom Grigoris Dimitriadis, Secretary General and nephew of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, dealt, are directly or indirectly linked to the companies that trade in Predator.

“Following the publication of our investigation, Dimitriadis sent an out-of-court statement against Reporters United, calling the publication a ‘blatant attempt to target and smear me’. However, he did not dispute the links between the companies and businessmen we presented in the investigation,” Chondrogiannos said.

Greek media report that journalists, lawyers, and civil servants have been put under surveillance by the National Intelligence Service; including BIRN contributor Stavros Malihoudis.

On February 24, Solomon media outlet filed an indictment to the Supreme Court about the surveillance of citizens by the National Intelligence Service.

“The political system, together with the authorities and the Greek justice system, must take the initiative and investigate such cases from their origin; we cannot live like this, and unfortunately in Greece, everyone, more or less, has the belief that they are watching us, even if this is not true,” Glavinas said.

EU Urged to Withdraw Child Abuse Law amid Privacy Concerns

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), together with 72 NGOs and professional bodies, on Wednesday sent an open letter to the European Commission demanding it withdraw proposed child abuse legislation and replace it with a provision that secures privacy, security and free expression for all.

The European Commission published on May 11 new draft legislation, called the CSA Regulation, that aims to prevent and combat child sexual abuse. Under the proposal, private message services (like WhatsApp and Signal), web-based emails, social media platforms, app stores, image hosting providers and others would be liable for obligations to scan, filter and/or block content – including encrypted messages.

“When you fundamentally undermine how the internet works, you make it less safe for everyone. If passed, this law will turn the internet into a space that is dangerous for everyone’s privacy, security, and free expression. This includes the very children that the legislation aims to protect,” the 73 civil society and professional groups wrote in the open letter to the EU Commission.

The CSA Regulation would cause severe harm in a wide variety of ways, the groups argued.

The new regulation would force private technology companies to put communications and materials that citizens share under surveillance, which would have a direct impact on respect for the privacy of every citizen, while also leading to a restriction of freedom of expression in digital communications, these groups argued.

“The provisions of the proposed legislation for the restriction and suppression of child exploitation material on the internet, while dealing with such an important issue, fail to safeguard the protection of all of us in the digital space and put the privacy of our communications in immediate danger,” Homo Digitalis, a Greek digital rights NGO that co-signed the open letter, told BIRN.

Journalists and human rights activists would see their communications monitored under the new law, which the EFJ argues “could jeopardise the fundamental protection of journalistic sources.”

“This will put in immediate danger not only the continuation of their important work, but even their personal safety, in cases of authoritarian regimes. We are already seeing important facts coming to light that show that journalists are being monitored illegally, even in Greece. Imagine the direct impact that the imposition of this legislation will have on the entire journalistic field, on human rights lawyers, etc. It will give the tools to authoritarian governments to put – legally now – any control over the internet,” said Homo Digitalis.

In Greece, in November last year, the Greek journalist and BIRN contributor Stavros Malihoudis, as well as human rights activists found themselves the targets of surveillance by the country’s National Intelligence Service. Recently, the Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis, a financial editor for CNN Greece and a regular contributor to local and international outlets including the Financial Times and CNBC, found that his mobile phone had been surveilled by Predator spyware.

Greek Post Restarts Services After Cyber-Attack Downs System

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Hellenic Post, ELTA, announced on Wednesday that it had restarted the system that enables objects and items to be sent abroad after a cyber-attack brought the computers down.

Days before, financial services and the sending of simple correspondence were also re-activated. The suspension of these operations, among other things, has caused delays in the payment of pensions.

After the cyber-attack in March brought down the ELTA computer systems, the company isolated the entire data centre and temporarily suspended the commercial information systems of all post offices.

The cyber-attack, aimed at crippling the operations of ELTA, started from malicious zero-time software, which was installed on a workstation and, with the ‘HTTPS reverse shell technique”, connected to a computer system controlled by the cyber group, said ELTA.

Kathimerini newspaper also reported that the hackers used ransomware – nowadays the most common form of corporate cyberattacks. Most times, the victim receives a phishing email including a malicious link or is infected with a ransomware attachment.

“This specific malware, when executed, encrypts part of the victim’s hard drive and, in order for the victim to receive the decryption key and retrieve the data, a ransom must be paid to the attacker,” Dimitris Aretis, Senior Manager EY Cybersecurity Consulting, told BIRN.

“Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies is used as the form of payment as it provides anonymity to the attacker and makes the transfer of funds untraceable,” he added.

US President Joe Biden on March 22 warned US companies of potential Russian cyber-attackers. But a source from ELTA told BIRN that Russian hackers were not involved in this case.

The Communications Privacy Protection Authority, ADAE, which is responsible for the criminal investigation of the case, declined to comment to BIRN on the issue.

On January 17, two hospitals in the Attika region, Sotiria and Asklipieio Voulas, fell victim of cyber blackmailers who used the same type of ransomware.

Panagiotis Stathis, chief of the 1st Health District of Attica, told BIRN that the hackers attacked the servers of the hospitals. The hackers did not get access to patients’ personal health data but only to the hospitals’ invoices and visitors. Sources told BIRN that the investigation into these cases is still ongoing.

Greek Prosecution of Novartis Reporters ‘an Attempt to Terrorize Journalists’

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

The former ruling New Democracy party MEP, and publisher of the free newspaper Free Sunday, George Kyrtsos, in a post on Twitter, condemned the prosecution of two journalists, Costas Vaxevanis and Gianna Papadakou, and a prosecutor, Eleni Touloupaki.

He said EU funds for Greece were at risk of being cut when the rule of law is violated, comparing Greece with Poland and Hungary.

New Democracy fired Kyrtsos last week as one of its MEPs over his criticism of the government’s handling of a long-running alleged drug bribery case involving the Swiss drugs firm Novartis.

It said Kyrtsos had failed to “promote the country’s positions in the European Parliament” and was instead “giving the country a bad name by questioning the independence of the Greek justice system and by comparing Greece to states that violate the rule of law”.

His behaviour “was an insult to all those who trusted him to represent them”. the party said. “There can be no tolerance for defaming the country,” it continued.

Kyrtsos on Monday responded by saying that Mitsotakis had personally warned him of his “imminent expulsion” back in April 2021. “I was surprised that he chose the battleground of Novartis in his effort to justify his authoritarian practices.”

“He has accused me of degrading the image of Greece and the government in the European Union. That kind of accusation is usually used by post-Soviet authoritarian regimes. … In my view, the negative image of the government in the European media and possibly in the European institutions is the result of Mitsotakis’ illiberal practices.”

The Novartis scandal has been the biggest political scandal in Greek history, involving ten former prime ministers and ministers from both New Democracy and its onetime left-wing rival PASOK taking bribes from the Swiss pharmaceutical giant.

The politicians denied wrongdoing and claimed the accusation was politically motivated. Novartis entered into an out-of-court settlement of $345 million with the US government.

Papadakou, an investigative journalist and press officer for The Left  in the European Parliament, interviewed an informant, Herve Falciani, a HSBC computer technician who revealed the names of the Greek businessmen in the Novartis affair who had hidden accounts in the Geneva branch of the bank.

The catalogue of the deposits held by more than 2,000 rich Greeks at the bank was handed over to the former Minister of Finance, George Papaconstantinou by Christine Lagarde with the purpose of pursuing tax offenders in October 2010. The result of the investigation was the conviction of the Papaconstantinou.

Papadakou is accused of participation in a criminal organisation that created a “fake scandal” about the Novartis affair and the so-called “Lagarde List”.

She told BIRN she was “in the spotlight because of my … revelations about the Novartis scandal on my television show.

“All of this is an organized attempt to terrorize journalists with the aim of their eventual extermination and the cover-up of two major scandals that cost the Greek people many millions of euros.”

The second targeted journalist, Costas Vaxevanis, publisher of the newspaper Documento is also facing charges of participation in a criminal organization, breach of duty and abuse of power through his newspaper’s reports on the Novartis scandal.

Other journalists in Greece make the same complaints as Papadakou.

On February 10, the lawsuit of the company WRE HELLAS SA was heard, asking for 225,000 euros from the cooperative newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton and the journalist Tassos Sarantis accusing them of making “offensive claims against the company”.

The reason was an investigation by Sarantis into the company, which has served a barrage of lawsuits against those who opposed the installation of a wind farm it owned in the area of ​​Monemvasia, in the Peloponnese.

“The company did not limit itself to the lawsuit against me, but also sent a legal notice to Journalists’ Union of Athens Daily Newspapers asking them to delete a post in support for me,” he told BIRN.

“The lawsuits of companies against journalists such as Stavroula Poulimeni and the Syros Observatory are a double attempt to silence the press and the environmental movements,” Sarantis told BIRN.

Recently, a Greek NGO, Hopeten, served members and journalists of Solomon and Reporters United with a legal notice regarding questions they had asked them as part of their investigation into the allocation of European funds for the accommodation of asylum seekers in Greece.

Kostas Koukoumakas, a journalist and member of Reporters United, told BIRN that his team received three different legal notices before publishing the investigation, sent – he says – in order to intimidate them.

He said the Ministry of Immigration, which was accountable for managing the money, unofficially advised them to “be careful” about publishing because both companies and NGOs could file lawsuits, something that Koukoumakas interpreted as the Ministry appearing almost as their defender.

IPI Europe Advocacy Officer Jamie Wiseman said: “Journalists carrying out independent, investigative and watchdog reporting in Greece are working in an increasingly suffocating climate, facing a restrictive landscape for accessing public information, online harassment and abuse, and threat of vexatious legal threats from powerful individuals or institutions.”

Greek Intelligence Service Accused of ‘Alarming’ Surveillance Activity

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Greek journalist Stavros Malichudis has described the activities of the country’s National Intelligence Service, EYP as “alarming” after a report alleged that he and others were put under surveillance.

“In theory, the National Intelligence Service is tasked with protecting the national security of the country. But journalism does not threaten society, it serves society,” Malichudis told BIRN.

The report by Greek journalist Dimitris Terzis for the newspaper EFSYN on Sunday presented evidence that journalists, civil servants and lawyers dealing with refugees, as well as members of the anti-vaccination movement, are being monitored by the EYP.

Terzis’ report alleged that wiretapping of telephone conversations and the creation of “ideological profiles” are some of the measures that have been used by the EYP, which comes under the control of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s office.

The report claimed that Malichudis, a BIRN contributor, was targeted over his report for the Greek investigative media outlet Solomon about a 12-year-old refugee child from Syria who was forced to live for months in administrative detention with his family on the island of Kos.

Terzis alleged that the EYP knew the content of conversations between Malichudis and an employee of the International Organization for Migration, IOM who helped him with the report for Solomon.

Malichudis questioned the EYP’s motives for the surveillance.

“The question that needs to be answered is why was the EYP interested in the work of Solomon, and to whom is the intelligence that is collected provided?” he asked.

The International Press Institute said it was “deeply concerned” by the report that Solomon and Malichudis were “secretly monitored by the National Intelligence Service”. Greek media outlets such as Reporters United and Inside Story also expressed concerns.

Terzis said that his in-depth investigation gained him access to secret documents.

“It’s unquestionable that the secret service monitors people and it cannot deny this. In the last two-and-a-half years, with the transfer of the Secret Service to the administration of the prime minister’s office, and in combination with the general context of state repression, the instrumentation of the secret service by the state is obvious,” he said.

At a press briefing on Monday, government spokesperson Giannis Oikonomou indirectly confirmed the claims that the EYP monitors specific citizens because of risks to public safety from “internal or external threats”.

The Greek government’s spokesperson did not respond to BIRN’s request for a comment.

SYRIZA, the main opposition to the right-wing ruling party, has asked for parliament’s Special Standing Committee on Institutions and Transparency to be convened and the commander of the EYP to be summoned for a hearing.

Greek Police Intensify Hunt For Journalist’s Assassins

Posted on by Ivana Jeremic

Greek police are intensifying efforts to locate the perpetrators of last Friday’s execution-style” killing of the veteran crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz, shooting him dead outside his house in the southern Athens suburb of Alimos.

Investigators are leaning to the possibility that two different teams were involved in the street slaying. The first team likely monitored the reporter’s movements after he left STAR TV channel, where he had taken part in a daytime show, and then informed the second team, who waited in the area on a motorcycle and executed the crime.

A CCTV video camera appears to show two riders some seven minutes before the attack. The driver can be seen wearing a helmet while the second driver, who according to witnesses hopped off the bike and shot the reporter as he got out of his car, is wearing a khaki hoodie, sunglasses and a mask.

Karaivaz took a total of ten bullets, six in his chest. According to reports, he was also shot twice in his head, verifying a passersby’s testimony that, once he fell to the ground, he received the final hit from the assassins before they got away.

According to media outlet Kathimerini, police believe the Beverly scooter used in the attack had been stolen, and have created a log of motorbikes of the same type reported stolen from their owners lately.

Police have been also trying to locate the safe house of the perpetrators. Investigations are focused on hotels and Airbnb apartments in the southern suburbs of Athens, but also on recent arrivals at Greece’s airports and across the land borders. For the moment, the lead scenario appears to be that the two perpetrators were brought from abroad for the hit, and left afterwards.

On Saturday, the Prime Minister, Kiriakos Mitsotakis, tweeted: “The assassination in cold blood of Giorgos Karaivaz has shocked the entire society,” adding that he met with the Minister of Citizen’s Protection, Michalis Chrisochoidis, to urge him to help solve the case.

But Mitsotakis has received criticism for only responding to the news of the assassination some 24 hours after the attack. His tweet came hours after various media freedom watchdogs, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, and foreign officials, including the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had already condemned the attack.

Former prime minister and opposition SYRIZA party leader Alexis Tsipras also criticized the government, saying that “those who were campaigning for law and order have let the country be converted to a colony of organised crime and uncontrolled action of gang mafias”.

Speaking on TV, the deputy Minister of Citizen’s Protection, Lefteris Oikonomou, said a series of similar-style assassinations in the last three years suggested that some form of “open war” has been going on.

On the website bloko.gr that he founded and managed, which focused on crime and police authorities, Karaivaz had reported on more than ten assassinations that have taken place since 2018 and are attributed to conflicts between different gangs for supremacy. The authorities have been studying his laptop, his car and his mobile phone, reportedly also hit by a bullet.

Karaivaz’s funeral meanwhile took place on Sunday in Kallifytos, a village just outside Drama, where his only son, Dimitris, 19, said: “My father believed a lot in people and he loved them. He believed in a second chance”.

“Of course, we want the people that killed him to be caught, so that they will not kill someone else in future,” he added.

“But my father would forgive them for killing him, and would look for the reason behind this and wouldn’t want this event to terrorize society – a society that fights for freedom and equality,” he concluded.

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