The suicide of a Greek telecommunications expert added to the murkiness surrounding the explosive revelations that eavesdroppers listened in on Greece's entire political and military elite, including the prime minister, for almost a year.
The death of Kostas Tsalikides, 39, who took his own life last March, a day after the discovery of sophisticated spy software at the mobile telephone operator Vodafone, has deepened the mystery of how 100 mobile phones, belonging to senior officials, were tapped in the run-up to the Athens Olympic Games. By hanging himself from his loft, the British-trained technician may have taken the secrets of Greece's Watergate to his grave.
"His suicide conceals many unanswered questions," wrote Ta Nea, the newspaper that broke the story last week. The extraordinary timing of the death, a day before Vodafone reported the surveillance system to the Greek government, had unleashed "all kinds of scenarios," the newspaper said. As the mobile company's network planning manager, he was best placed to know who installed the software, insiders claim.
"We found no suicide note," said Tsalikides's brother, Panayiotis. "He had no health problems, was about to marry and was doing very well at work."
Even by the standards of scandal-prone Greece, the wiretaps revelations have been met with disbelief. Among those targeted by the eavesdroppers were the foreign, defense and public order ministers, as well as Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and the leadership of the armed forces. Others included civil rights activists, the head of the "stop the war" coalition, journalists and Arabs based in Athens.
According to the government, which caused as much commotion with its abrupt decision to inform the public last Thursday, the monitoring began in June 2004, peaked around the August Olympic Games, and continued to March 2005 when the illicit system was uncovered following a barrage of operational complaints from customers.
The hi-tech software enabled phone conversations to be diverted to a set of 14 "shadow" mobile phones which then relayed them to a recording system. Officials say the calls were intercepted on mobile phones picked up by antennae in an area close to the US embassy.
"This is all like something out of science fiction," said the Socialist opposition leader George Papandreou.
Why had Vodafone unilaterally deactivated the system, he asked, making it impossible for the authorities to trace where the calls were being monitored?
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS