Former MEP Stelios Kouloglou sues Israeli NSO over alleged Pegasus spying

Stelios Kouloglou, a Greek journalist and former European Parliament member, submitted a formal complaint to the Athens First Instance Prosecutor, alleging that Israel's NSO Group used its Pegasus spyware to infiltrate his mobile phone. The filing, made with his attorney Zacharias Kesse, points to two infection periods that coincided with critical sessions of the PEGA committee, which was examining the use of surveillance tools like Pegasus and Predator.

Independent forensic testing by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto confirmed the presence of Pegasus in his device in late 2022 and again in March 2023. The complaint accuses NSO of multiple offenses, including privacy breaches, unlawful access to information systems and violations of data-protection statutes, some classified as felonies. Kouloglou asserts that the spyware could have accessed virtually all personal data, from contacts and photos to geolocation and health records, and could have remotely turned on his phone’s camera.

He stresses that such surveillance threatens the independence of parliamentary work and the broader public’s right to privacy. The lawyer warned that similar attacks have occurred elsewhere and called for a thorough investigation by Greek courts.