RADOMIR LAZOVIĆ WAS UNDER BIA SURVEILLANCE: Green-Left Front MP reveals how he found out he was wiretapped along with students!

Green-Left Front MP Radomir Lazović was wiretapped at the same time as the students, during the local elections in Serbia, as well as during intensive contacts with European Union officials, when the opposition was informing the international public in Brussels, Strasbourg, and Paris about events in our country. In an interview with Nova.rs, Lazović reveals how he found out that he was under BIA surveillance and how foreign expert organizations became involved in the case.

Students revealed yesterday that they had been wiretapped during the local elections in Serbia. At the same time, ZLF MP Radomir Lazović was also under BIA surveillance. He had previously made such claims, but this time they were confirmed by expert organizations.

“In previous cases, we did have indications, but we did not have hard evidence as we do now. And now we also have evidence that our claims are correct, confirmed by independent expert organizations such as the Share Foundation, Citizen Lab and Amnesty International,” Lazović told Nova.rs, explaining that they were monitored using the most sophisticated software.

“They can be installed on your phones so that you do not have to do anything, you do not have to click anywhere, there is no fake website or fake link, but rather it installs itself and you practically do not know what is happening. What helped was that at one point we received a notification from Apple that our phones were under attack, and that was the reason we contacted these expert organizations. That happened about two weeks ago.”

First, they contacted the Share Foundation, Lazović told Nova.rs, which then, together with colleagues from Citizen Lab and Security Lab, examined the phones.

“They confirmed what we suspected, that there was spyware on our phones that monitors messages, takes screenshots, can turn on the camera, microphone… It can practically take over the entire phone, and this data is sent to servers accessible to the regime. According to the findings of the Share Foundation, that network leads to the Security Intelligence Agency, one of those branches leads to the BIA,” the ZLF co-president said, adding that several different types of software had been used.

“So, it is not just Pegasus, but software produced domestically, Novi Spy, also appears, and its use is likewise illegal. It steals data from the phone and sends it to a server whose IP address belongs to the Security Intelligence Agency. It works by requiring them to take your phone, unlock it, and install the software on it. To unlock it, they use a digital forensics tool, Cellebrite, which the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs received as a gift from the Norwegian government. It is now being used to wiretap activists, students and political opponents of the regime, and that is truly unacceptable.”

Lazović says that he was also under surveillance during the local elections, which coincided with the period when he and other opposition members were holding intensive talks with representatives of the European Union about the situation in Serbia.

“At that time, we were involved in a major international initiative with the idea of trying to change the European Union’s attitude toward the criminal regime of Aleksandar Vučić. We visited Brussels, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm, and spoke with representatives of EU member states. I assume that was why I was under surveillance, but also because of the elections that were taking place here, because ZLF, although it did not have a candidate on the lists, participated in all the elections and helped the joint list wherever we could,” Lazović said, concluding:

“It is very important that we managed to catch them, thanks to good cooperation among all the actors and with enormous help from expert organizations. It is a special story that a regime that has all the resources at its disposal—the army, the police—still has to wiretap us. That only shows that it is truly standing on glass legs.”