Greek investigative journalist Thanasis Koukakis has taken his surveillance case to the European Court of Human Rights, alleging that Greek authorities failed to conduct an independent, impartial and effective investigation into his monitoring by the country’s intelligence service and through the Predator spyware.
The application against Greece brings one of the country’s most politically sensitive surveillance cases before the Strasbourg-based court, shifting the dispute from Greece’s domestic judicial system to Europe’s principal human-rights tribunal.
Koukakis, a financial and investigative journalist, was subjected to two forms of surveillance: monitoring by Greece’s National Intelligence Service, known by its Greek initials EYP, and a separate infection of his mobile phone with Predator, a sophisticated commercial spyware system capable of accessing communications and other data on a targeted device.
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His application argues that Greek authorities failed to adequately establish why he was targeted, who ultimately benefited from the use of Predator and whether there was a connection between the intelligence service’s surveillance and the spyware operation. At the center of the case is a question of judicial impartiality involving Konstantinos Tzavellas, who at the time was Greece’s Supreme Court prosecutor.
According to a statement issued by Koukakis’s lawyers, Tzavellas personally handled a criminal case file that emerged after an Athens misdemeanor court issued ruling BM 853/2026. That court convicted four individuals and imposed multiyear prison sentences, while ordering further investigation into possible additional offenses, including espionage, and into the identities of those who ultimately benefited from the unlawful surveillance.
On April 27, 2026, shortly after receiving the extensive case file, Tzavellas decided against reopening or re-examining an earlier investigation that had been shelved by Supreme Court Deputy Prosecutor Achilleas Zisis, according to Koukakis’s lawyers.
The journalist’s application argues that Tzavellas’s involvement created a conflict raising questions about what European human-rights law calls “objective impartiality.”
Central part of Koukakis’s claim
Before becoming Supreme Court prosecutor, Tzavellas had served as the prosecutor overseeing EYP. In that capacity, Koukakis’s lawyers say, he had personally signed orders authorizing the interception of the journalist’s communications during the summer of 2020. Koukakis’s lawyers contend that this meant the same judicial official was later placed in a position to assess an investigation that could potentially scrutinize his own earlier official decisions. They also say Tzavellas neither voluntarily recused himself nor allowed a request for his exclusion to be examined before deciding not to reopen the case.
That issue forms a central part of Koukakis’s claim under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair hearing. His application argues that the handling of the case failed the convention’s requirement of objective impartiality.
The complaint goes further. Koukakis alleges violations of Article 8, protecting private and family life, and Article 10, which safeguards freedom of expression. The latter carries particular significance in surveillance cases involving journalists because of the potential exposure of confidential sources and the broader chilling effect that monitoring can have on investigative reporting.
His lawyers argue that Greek authorities failed to conduct the kind of thorough and institutionally independent criminal investigation required to determine the purpose behind his targeting, identify those who benefited from the spyware operation and examine possible links between official intelligence surveillance and the deployment of Predator.
The application also invokes Article 13 of the convention, which guarantees an effective remedy for alleged violations of protected rights. Koukakis argues that Greece’s legal system did not provide him with a practical means of obtaining an independent review of the decision to shelve key aspects of the investigation.
The Strasbourg proceedings represent a new stage in a surveillance controversy that has tested Greece’s political and judicial institutions and raised wider questions about the use of commercial spyware in Europe.
Koukakis’s case has been particularly significant because his phone was targeted with Predator in addition to being placed under official intelligence surveillance. The overlap has fueled demands for investigators to determine whether the two episodes were connected and, if so, who ordered or benefited from them.
Those questions remain at the heart of his appeal to the European court. Koukakis isn’t asking the Strasbourg judges simply to reconsider individual investigative decisions. His case challenges whether the Greek state provided an institutional framework capable of independently examining allegations involving its own intelligence apparatus and senior judicial officials.
The European Court of Human Rights will ultimately have to determine whether Greece met its obligations under the convention. Koukakis’s allegations remain claims before the court, and the filing itself doesn’t establish that Greece violated the convention.
But by taking the case to Strasbourg, the journalist has ensured that the unresolved questions surrounding his surveillance - and the way Greek authorities investigated it - will now face scrutiny beyond Greece’s borders.
