[kictanet] Vodafone Greece:Death muddies Greek spy probe

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"Death muddies Greek spy probe"
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4838552.stm>
[BBC]
By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Athens

A senior aide to the Greek prime minister is expected
to be the next person to testify before a
parliamentary committee investigating what is believed
to be the worst espionage scandal in the country's
history.

Last month, the government admitted that the mobile
phones of the prime minister, the most senior members
of the cabinet and top security officials had all been
tapped in 2004 - the year Athens hosted the Olympic
Games.

The committee in Athens has been questioning
executives from two of the world's leading mobile
phone companies, Vodafone and Ericsson, about the
scandal.

But attention is also increasingly focusing on the
alleged suicide of a senior Vodafone manager just
after the phone-tapping operation was discovered on
the Vodafone network last year.

In a serene but cramped graveyard in the western
suburbs of Athens, lies the body of Costas Tsalikidis,
a network manager for Vodafone Greece.

He is buried with other members of his family. But his
gravestone shows he died aged just 38. He was found
hanged in his apartment on the morning of 9 March last
year.

The next day, the head of Vodafone Greece walked into
the office of one of the prime minister's top aides to
inform the government that its phones had been bugged
for at least eight months.

The official verdict was that Mr Tsalikidis had
committed suicide.

Suspicions

In a statement issued last month, just after the story
about the phone-tapping operation first broke,
Vodafone categorically denied there was any connection
between his death and the scandal.

"Any attempt to connect these two is, to say the
least, irrelevant," it said.

But his family believe his death is suspicious and are
calling for his body to be exhumed so a second
post-mortem can be carried out by one of the world's
leading forensic pathologists, Dr Michael Baden of the
United States.

"They believe they will find new evidence," says the
family lawyer, Themis Sofos. Dr Sofos adds that other
parts of the original investigation were weak.

"No one went to the house of Costas, no one took
photos and to see the circumstances of his death... no
one took fingerprints."

Official inquiry

Mr Tsalikidis' family recently took matters into their
own hands, filing a lawsuit against "persons unknown"
for complicity in his murder or suicide.

They allege that even if he was not murdered, he may
have faced threats which left him with no choice but
to take his own life.

Meanwhile, their lawyer has been handing evidence to a
prosecutor in Athens, who is now carrying out an
official inquiry into the death of Mr Tsalikidis.

The prosecutor is expected to announce his conclusion
within the next few weeks.

Family and friends of Costas Tsalikidis believe there
are strong indications he was the person who first
discovered that highly sophisticated software had been
secretly inserted into the Vodafone network in 2004,
enabling at least 100 phone lines to be constantly
tapped.

"The end of January or early February (2005) I think
is the time Costas had access or took knowledge of the
interception system and he (re)searched about its
function and origin," says lawyer Themis Sofos.

"He was not the kind of man to keep secret about
something. He would not have co-operated with
criminals or criminal acts."

Text messages

According to Dr Sofos, Mr Tsalikidis told his fiancee
at this time that it was a "matter of life and death"
that he leave his job.

The lawyer also says they have looked at text messages
he received on his mobile from colleagues in early
February 2005, including one which apparently urges
him to keep working and offers him support.

But there is another theory about Costas Tsalikidis:
that he was allegedly the person who actually inserted
the software setting up the phone-tapping operation.

"It is possible," says Themis Sofos. "I cannot exclude
anything."

The theory is put forward by John Brady Kiesling a
former American diplomat who worked at the US embassy
in Athens until resigning in 2003 over the US-led
invasion of Iraq.

He is convinced American intelligence agents were
behind the whole bugging operation and he says it is
possible they used Mr Tsalikidis to install the
software.

"I believe he committed suicide to protect his
professional honour," says Mr Kiesling.

As for why the Americans would tap the phones of the
political and security elite of a country regarded as
an ally, Mr Kiesling says there is a simple answer.

Trust

He argues American intelligence agencies would not
have trusted the Greeks with the massive security
operation surrounding the Athens Olympics in August
2004 set up to counter any potential terrorist threat.

"They believe you cannot trust foreigners, that
foreigners are incompetent and of dubious
trustworthiness," he says. "You owe it to yourself if
you have the capability, to have an independent ear
listening to them and I think that is what this was."

This might also explain why the Greek government kept
silent about the scandal for almost a year from March
2005 when it was informed about it, until last month
when it finally held a news conference detailing what
had happened.

The news conference took place shortly after a Greek
newspaper had broken the story. Despite repeated
requests, no-one from the government was willing to
give an interview to the BBC about the scandal.

The US embassy also refused to comment and the
Vodafone Greece press office would only refer us to
statements on its website. 
---ends---


       
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