Zbigniew Ziobro did not appear before the parliamentary investigative commission into surveillance of the Pegasus system. This is the fourth time the committee has tried to question the former Minister of Justice.
The former minister and prosecutor general was to be questioned on Monday, November 4, at 10 a.m. in connection with the purchase and surveillance of the Pegasus system in Poland. He didn't show up.
– Currently, as a committee, we should submit a request to punish him for failure to appear and impose a disciplinary penalty to the District Court in Warsaw, but at the same time, as a committee, we should submit a request to detain Zbigniew Ziobro and bring him before the committee, and at the same time apply to the Prosecutor General to has started the procedure, as a result of which the Sejm will consent to lifting the immunity of Mr. Zbigniew Ziobro – said the chairwoman of the committee, Magdalena Sroka (PSL-TD).
Tomasz Trela, deputy head of the commission, asked in an interview with Polskie Radio 24 whether Zbigniew Ziobro had sent sick leavejustifying his possible absence at Monday's committee meeting, replied that “there was no such document as of yesterday (Sunday – editor).”
Another absence of Ziobro
Ziobro did not appear at previous committee meetings. He excused his absence twice with a doctor's note. When he failed to justify the third absence, an application for a fine was submitted to the District Court in Warsaw.
Zbigniew Ziobro justified his inability to participate in the hearings due to cancer. An opinion on his health was issued by an expert doctor who stated that there were no obstacles to the questioning of the former Minister of Justice. – Zbigniew Ziobro has no grounds to deny the expert opinion that we currently have – emphasized the chairwoman of the commission, Magdalena Sroka. – If the circumstances of Ziobro's health have changed since the opinion was issued, there are also provisions for this – added Sroka. She emphasized that “as a former minister of justice, he should be perfectly aware that in such a situation he is obliged to send appropriate medical certificates.”
The Pegasus Commission of Inquiry is examining the legality of the software. It is to check the correctness and purposefulness of activities undertaken using the system, including: by the government, secret services and police until November 2023. In addition, the commission is to investigate who was responsible for purchasing this and similar tools.
Zbigniew ZiobroRafał Guz/PAP
“Supposedly a commission”
On Thursday, October 31, Zbigniew Ziobro published a call for a committee hearing. “This card would even be funny, and its authors would be good jokers, if it were not for the fact that, according to the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal, the members of this 'supposedly commission' had committed a crime, among others, under Article 231 of the Penal Code,” he wrote.
“On September 10, the Constitutional Tribunal stated that the scope of activities of the parliamentary investigative committee on Pegasus was inconsistent with the Constitution and removed it from the legal system. MPs impersonating a non-existent commission will be held criminally liable for this – it is a matter of time. I will send each of them a copy of the Constitutional Tribunal's judgment, so that they can't defend themselves in court because they didn't know,” he added.
The commission investigating the legality of software has already questioned, among others, the president PIS Jarosław Kaczyńskiformer deputy prime minister of the Ministry of Justice and politician of Sovereign Poland Michał Woś, or former director of the Department of Family and Juvenile Affairs Mikołaj Pawlak.