Androulakis: 'The goal of the Mitsotakis government was to cover up the deep state it created'

"The goal of the Mitsotakis government from the start was to cover up the deep state it had itself created," the president of opposition PASOK-Movement for Change, Nikos Androulakis, asserted on Tuesday in Brussels, in his address to the European Parliament's PEGA Committee. Androulakis was presenting the Socialists and Democrats during the hearings of the head of the Hellenic Authority for Communications Security and Privacy, Christos Rammos, and of the head of the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, Konstantinos Menoudakos.

Androulakis said his claim was based on two facts: "After the monitoring of Mr. Koukakis, a law was passed forbidding the victims, whose surveillance had found nothing, from being informed. After the revelation of my own case - in other words the attempt using predator and the monitoring of my mobile phone - even though the government said that it wanted light to be shed and transparency, it passed a law that permitted giving information, in some cases, three years later. Namely, after the national elections. This proves that the target was a cover up and not to reveal the guilty parties in this deep state mechanism."

PASOK-KINAL's leader also commented that, in any European country where the rule of law is working properly, the prime minister's nephew, the public prosecutor involved and the then head of the Greek intelligence service would have been asked to explain themselves before justice.

"It is abundantly clear that after this blatant violation of human rights and the Constitution, Mr. Mitsotakis could not remain as prime minister either," Androulakis added.

Instead, however, there was "an unbelievable reaction of an authoritarian view" and instead of the guilty being uncovered and led to justice, "the victims and the unimpeachable judges that are trying to find out and make public what has happened in this case are being targeted with attacks on their ethics and for their political extermination," he said.

He expressed support for Rammos, who he said had been targeted by sections of the media and specific ministers for doing his job.

The PEGA Committee had invited Rammos and Menoudakos to inform MEPs on the situation in Greece concerning illegal surveillance software such as Predator and the protection of data privacy, as part of an ongoing parliamentary investigation.