Former Polish justice minister arrested in sprawling spyware probe

Polish police on Friday arrested the country’s former justice minister, alleging that he signed off on the use of government money to pay for spyware used to snoop on opposition leaders and supervised cases where the technology was deployed.

The arrest of Zbigniew Ziobro — who was justice minister from 2015 to 2023 — follows the arrest earlier this week of the country’s former Internal Security Agency chief Piotr Pogonowski, according to local news reports.

Ziobro’s arrest is the latest high-profile action in a probe the country’s new prime minister has undertaken to mete out justice for nearly 600 people who are believed to have been victims of the spyware attacks. The abuses took place from 2017 to 2022.

In February, current Prime Minister DonaldDaniel Tusk said that he had surfaced documents which “confirm 100%” that the prior administration had used a powerful zero-click form of spyware known as Pegasus to target opponents. Pegasus is manufactured by the NSO Group, which is based in Israel.

Poland’s probe has been going on for years. In September, the country’s Senate announced that a commission investigating whether Pegasus had been deployed to hack an opposition politician’s device in 2019 found "gross violations of constitutional standards.”

The country’s 2019 elections were tainted by the use of Pegasus, Senate investigators said, recommending criminal charges.

The Senate committee’s chairman said at the time that he could “unequivocally state that Pegasus was used in Poland to an extremely aggressive degree.”

Other European governments have had their own Pegasus scandals in recent years, including Greece, Spain and Hungary.

Ziobro had refused to attend hearings probing the Pegasus deployment, saying that participation “would be engaging in illegal activities and possibly a crime,” according to local news reports. 

Human rights advocates have praised Poland for its attempts to hold those responsible accountable. 

Natalia Krapiva, senior tech counsel at Access Now, said the abuses in Poland are all the more egregious because of how use of the illegal surveillance was financed.

“While spyware like Pegasus is allegedly designed to protect crime victims, the Polish investigation reveals the past government misappropriated crime victims funds to spy on the opposition and civil society,” she said.