PREDATORGATE

39th hearing: All four defendants (Giannis Lavranos, Felix Bitzios, Tal Dilian, Sara Hamou) are found guilty of all three offences they face ((i) interference with a personal data archiving system, jointly, continuously, completed and attempted, (ii) violation of confidentiality of telephone communication and oral conversation, jointly, continuously, completed and attempted, (iii) illegal access to an information or data system, jointly, continuously, completed and attempted), according to the decision of the presiding judge of the 2nd Single-Member Misdemeanours Court of Athens. For the first two acts, the court adopted the prosecutor's proposal, which recommended conversion from continuous to concurrent offences. The court rejected mitigating factors and sentenced the defendants to a total of 126 years and 8 months (8 years to be served). The court ordered full service of the sentence, but granted suspension until the case is heard on appeal, provided the defendants file an appeal. The court accepted the prosecutor's proposal to refer the case file for investigation of criminal liability: (1) for the offence of Article 148 of the Penal Code (espionage); (2) for the offence of Penal Code 370 F (prohibition of software trafficking); (3) referral for Aimilios Kosmidis for complicity in the acts of the indictment; (4) investigation of the offence of false testimony in court for A. Kosmidis and S. Dalas; (5) assessment of criminal liability of persons who had full knowledge of what was happening, specifically Rotem Farkas, Merom Harpaz, Einat Semana (senior executive of Dilian's affiliated companies), Sotiris Dalas, as well as three Intellexa employees (Dimitris Xypteras, Ioannis Toumpis, Ioannis Boliaris); (6) referral for expansion regarding what Stamatis Trimpalis testified about the parliamentary inquiry committee proceedings for false testimony and moral authorship for G. Lavranos and S. Dalas; (7) referral for Konstantinos Petridis (friend of A. Kosmidis who was paid by the Greek Intelligence Service (EYP)). The court further decided "to permanently cease prosecution for all 108 victims who did not file a formal complaint".

38th hearing: Lawyers for three defendants (G. Lavranos, T. Dilian, S. Chamou) deliver their closing arguments: Dionysis Mataragkas, Eleftheria Rizou, and Andreas Mitsainas. The lawyers argued that their clients should be acquitted of all charges, citing evidence of a common EYP-Predator centre to support the claim that the defendants, unlike the state, are not connected to the illegal software. Specifically, Mr. Mataragkas said that "there is the narrative about a common Greek Intelligence Service (EYP)-Predator centre, with simultaneous surveillance and an operational centre at KETIAK. However, this narrative also says that Predator is sold only to governments and not to private individuals. And this does not serve the indictment, since it does not prove any direct perpetration by Ms. Chamou and Mr. Dilian," while Ms. Rizou stated that "all indications support that the Greek authorities procured and used Predator." Ms. Rizou also said that "the chief prosecutor is seeking the conviction of Mr. Lavranos as de facto manager of Krikel, which is connected to Intellexa through transactions and export licenses to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This transcendent conception of guilt is unprecedented for a criminal trial. [...] In this trial, Mr. Lavranos was accused of many things, of false identities, of cronyism, of relationships with politicians, of allegedly going to Israel with a fake passport on an official state mission. However, even the most vehement accusers of Mr. Lavranos could not attribute to him any charge related to Predator and said absolutely nothing about the wiretapping." Finally, Ms. Rizou said that the journalists who investigated the scandal "lacked the greatest quality of a journalist, objectivity," while Mr. Mataragkas also argued that investigative journalism was mobilised as the "absolute tool" to develop the "narrative of private individual involvement" in Predator.

37th hearing: Felix Bitzios's lawyers, Niki Orfanidou and Yiannis Kyriakidis, deliver their closing arguments. The two lawyers turned against the media that exposed the surveillance operations. "I respect journalists for their work. However, in this case they did not grasp subtle legal concepts and created a false picture, which they introduced into the court and ultimately believed themselves," Mr. Kyriakidis said; "all the sources of the press reports are completely anonymous and unverifiable, which makes it impossible to verify their reliability and the truth of the reported events. [...] The reports do not constitute independent evidence. [...] They incorporate subjective judgments and not judicially established facts. [...] They have not been collected in accordance with the prescribed procedural guarantees," Ms. Orfanidou argued. The lawyers did not align themselves with the prosecutor's recommendation (for conviction), while they maintained that their client was not de facto an administrator in any of the companies mentioned in the indictment. Mr. Kyriakidis argued that the court should not take into account the Predator messages allegedly sent to persons who did not appear at the trial to confirm their targeting. Mr. Kyriakidis acknowledged two completed surveillance operations via Predator (Koukakis and Siford) and another seven Predator message transmissions, one of which occurred while Mr. Bitzios was still at Intellexa.