Pegasus – investigative commission. Ernest Bejda and Krzysztof Brejza – audition

Boss CBA in 2016-2020 Ernest Bejda was to be questioned by the commission on October 8, but he did not appear at the hearing. He justified his absence with the September judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal on the unconstitutionality of the commission. The committee found such a justification ineffective due to “the issue of defective composition of the Constitutional Tribunal issuing the judgment” and “lack of proper announcement of the judgment, which means that the judgment has no legal force.” Therefore, the commission asked the court to fine the former head of the CBA.

The chairwoman of the committee, Magdalena Sroka (PSL-TD), said that the committee had not received any letter from Bejda regarding Monday's hearing. – I hope that he will show up and bravely answer the questions we will ask him – she added.

In 2005, former boss Ministry of Interior and Administration Mariusz Kamińskiwho at that time served as the government's plenipotentiary for developing a program to combat abuse in public institutions, appointed Bejda as a legal expert. A year later, when Kamiński was appointed head of the CBA, Bejda became his deputy. He was dismissed from this position in October 2009.

After Paweł Wojtunik resigned as the head of the CBA in 2015, Bejda first performed his duties and then became the head of the CBA. In the same year, Kamiński was appointed as a minister in the government of Beata Szydło with powers to coordinate the activities of the secret services.

On Monday, the second witness called before the committee will be KO MEP (in 2019, MP, and after the autumn elections, senator) Krzysztof Brejza. According to information announced at the turn of 2021/2022 by the Canadian group Citizen Lab, he was supposed to be under surveillance with Pegasus. Brejza's phone was hacked 33 times between April 26, 2019 and October 23, 2019, when he was KO's chief of staff before the parliamentary elections. In April this year The National Prosecutor's Office confirmed that Brejza was under surveillance with Pegasus.

Sroka announced that the commission would ask Brejza how the Pegasus system was used “to attack the head of the election campaign of the then largest opposition party.” She emphasized that there would be many more questions because in the case of Brejza “we were dealing with a situation in which materials were leaked to the government media, which, through manipulation, led to a campaign against one of the leading politicians of the then opposition.”

The KO MEP accuses the services of, among other things, manipulating the content obtained from his phone.

The Pegasus Commission of Inquiry is examining the legality, correctness and purposefulness of activities undertaken using this software, including: by the government, secret services and police from November 2015 to November 2023. The Commission is also to determine who was responsible for the purchase of Pegasus and similar tools for the Polish authorities.

On September 10, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the scope of activities of the Pegasus investigative commission was unconstitutional. Judge Stanisław Piotrowicz, justifying the Tribunal's decision, said that the resolution to appoint an investigative committee regarding Pegasus was “affected by a legal defect”. According to the Constitutional Tribunal, the Sejm adopted a resolution while deliberating “in the wrong composition” by preventing Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik (who were sentenced by a final judgment).

So far, the committee has heard, among others, the former deputy prime minister and the president PIS Jarosław Kaczyńskiformer deputy head of the Ministry of Justice, politician of Sovereign Poland Michał Woś, former director of the Department of Family and Juvenile Affairs at the Ministry of Justice Mikołaj Pawlak and other employees of the Ministry of Justice.

Pegasus is a system that was created by the Israeli company NSO Group to fight terrorism and organized crime. Using Pegasus, you can not only eavesdrop on conversations from an infected smartphone, but also gain access to other data stored in it, e.g. e-mails, photos or video recordings, as well as cameras and microphones.