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Iceland proposes referendum on resuming EU accession talks in August – Europe live

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s National Police has opened “criminal proceedings” into what it says was a “hostage” situation involving the seven employees and the two vehicles of Oschadbank stopped by Hungary, the Ukrainian ministry of foreign affairs said. “The case has been registered under articles on illegal deprivation of liberty/kidnapping and hostage-taking. Ukrainian police have filed official requests to Europol, Hungary’s tax and customs service, and Hungarian police. The investigation is ongoing,” it said in a statement.

Divert, turn back or fly around: what it’s like to be a pilot when missiles start crossing your flight path

Keith Tonkin has flown a Boeing 747 towards airspace where missiles were being fired, and knows the pressure pilots have been under this week. “You’re stuck in that airplane until you land safely,” the veteran Australian pilot says. Amid the expanding war in Iran – with missiles piercing the skies over the Middle East – pilots’ regimented routes have been thrown into chaos. They’ve been forced to turn planes around mid-flight or squeeze into narrowing air corridors, with hundreds of lives in their hands. “They’ll be seeing more aeroplanes around them than they would have experienced in the past,” Tonkin says of the commercial pilots affected by conflict. Sign up: AU Breaking News email “When the airspace is congested and you’ve got less room to manoeuvre. If something goes wrong, you have fewer options.” Airspace was closed on Saturday, after the US and Israel launched airstrikes and Iran retaliated with a barrages of missiles across the Middle East. Airborne planes diverted to the nearest airports available. The mass disruption was a stark difference to the one-off disruptions pilots usually face, says Tonkin, a former Qantas captain. He says that in the early 2000s India once fired missiles in his flight path as he piloted his regular Boeing 747 route from Rome to Singapore. Air traffic controllers warned Tonkin that live missile drills had unexpectedly closed the airspace around the Bay of Bengal, forcing him to recalculate. “The first thing is: Where are we? And how much fuel have we got and where do we need to go?” he says. Tonkin and his first officer, or co-pilot, checked their maps for a nearby airport to land at. With enough fuel reserves, they decided to keep going – the long way around. These calculations would normally be made with computer readouts and airline operations centre on speed dial, Tonkin says. But crises that erupt without warning can leave pilots to rely on their own judgment. Diversion dilemmas Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and neighbours closed all or part of their airspace on Saturday. Emirates, Qatar and Etihad airlines all rushed to ground flights, filling up airport space. The vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, Steve Cornell, says colleagues told him that some airliners flying with low fuel were forced to land even when their calls to air traffic controllers were not being acknowledged. “Their only option was to land, whether they were going to be cleared to do so or not,” he says. “The closer you get to Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi, the [fewer] options you’ve got when all those airports close.” Other pilots heading to the region, but who were further away from the conflict, could take time to plan to turn back, Cornell says. In one case, an Emirates flight from Auckland was eight hours into its journey when news broke of the US strikes in Iran on Saturday night – it returned to New Zealand. Stopping and waiting in Singapore or Australia would have offered little benefit as Dubai’s airport remained closed for days. Diversions can also create other problems, Cornell says. Planes arriving unexpectedly may find airports are already busy, delaying their refuelling and departure. Passengers can also be stuck on planes, or forced to handle unfamiliar border and immigration systems. Airlines develop contingency plans for conflicts and can advise crews over satellite phone, while many planes even have alternate routes pre-programmed into their navigation systems, according to aviation experts. It’s the captains, though, that have ultimate responsibility and they have faced extreme pressure this week, Cornell says. “Information was fairly scarce to come by, so they were operating under a fairly high level of uncertainty, which is stressful for anyone,” he says. Calm teamwork between captain and first officer is key, according to Christopher Docherty, who had a bullet puncture his seat while serving as first officer on a flight to Haiti. Docherty and captain Juan Zuluaga were just 500 feet in the air approaching Haiti’s Port-au-Prince in 2024 when their plane was shot six times, injuring a flight attendant and damaging key systems, including crucial fuel level indicators. The duo rerouted to Santiago, 300 km away, with later analysis finding they had made the right choices, Docherty told a recognition event in December. “The fact that we had two pilots in this cockpit on this day was why this flight was successful,” he says. Finding a path to safety Once pilots take a new course they must tell air traffic controllers. Dr Tony Stanton, consultant director of Strategic Air, says controllers’ jobs became much harder over the past week, as they struggle to slot planes into overstuffed air routes while keeping them far enough apart. Air traffic maps show planes squeezed into key paths to get around Iran – one over Turkey to the north, and one over Egypt and Oman to the south. Those highways of the sky are now “very congested,” Stanton says, creating delays worldwide. Stanton says pilots also need to advise the cabin crew and consider telling passengers about military actions near planned flight paths, if safe to do so. “You don’t want to scare the crap out of people,” he says. “You’ve got to ask yourself: do people need to know? Will it just scare people when they can’t do anything about it anyway?” It can be more straightforward to tell people upfront, as one American Airlines captain did after turning back towards Philadelphia to avoid the US strikes. A passenger, Aaqil Mujiburrahman, said the flight to Doha was seven hours in when the captain’s voice sounded over the intercom. “The captain made an announcement, it’s like: ‘war has begun, so the airspaces have been closed and we need to head back,’” he told ABC News in the US. Pilots are focused on passenger comfort and face regular training and testing to ensure they’re up to the task, Stanton says, with all airlines providing strong support to their teams in the air today. “If you’re flying with the major airline, you could rest assured that there’s a whole lot of work that’s been done in the background to ensure the safety of that flight,” he says.

Iran is not Venezuela, despite Trump’s hopes of repeating ‘regime capture’ strategy

First, the CIA tracks the head of an oil-rich, US-baiting nation to a heavily guarded compound at the heart of his country’s mountain-flanked capital. Then, that leader is removed from power with a deadly and irresistible show of US military force. Finally, a more pliant successor is installed to do Washington’s bidding. That was the recipe for Donald Trump’s recent capture of Venezuela’s regime. The country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted in Caracas before dawn on 3 January. After special forces seized Maduro, his vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, stepped up with Trump’s blessing, launching a once-unlikely, pro-US era for a South American country whose leaders had long railed against “Yankee” imperialism. “I thank President Donald Trump for the kind willingness of his government to work together,” Rodríguez posted on X on Thursday, in perhaps her most unabashed act of genuflection since her ally’s downfall. Three months after Maduro’s demise, Trump appears keen to replicate “regime capture” model in Iran after its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in Tehran during a devastating Israeli-US operation targeting his base. “I have to be involved in the appointment [of his successor], like with Delcy in Venezuela,” Trump told the US news website Axios this week. Speaking to the New York Times, he said: “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is … the perfect scenario.” A state department official told the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s strategy – “managing” a regime’s behaviour from afar without putting US boots on the ground – might be called “decapitate and delegate”. Yet South America and Middle East experts have serious doubts about whether what has so far worked in Caracas would work 7,000 miles away in Tehran. “Turning Iran into a pliable kind of puppet regime is much less practical than in Venezuela where [even under Maduro] … the government was already inclined to work with the US, its historic partner for energy and the key player in the region,” said Benjamin Gedan, a former South America director on the national security council staff at the White House and now the director of the Stimson Center Latin America Program He added: “This idea that after Venezuela the US could go around the world intervening and installing a Delcy Rodríguez figure wherever our aircraft carrier weighs anchor, it’s a sort of silly idea.” Iran experts believe Trump’s demand to be involved in choosing the country’s next leader is likely to be rejected out of hand by the country’s surviving officials as brazen interference in their domestic politics. The country has bitter memories of meddling by outside powers, including Britain, Russia and the US. To a large degree, the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic regime to power was fuelled by nationalist resentment over perceived foreign intervention. The then reigning pro-western monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was widely considered an American puppet. Anti-Americanism, exemplified by the revolutionary chant “Marg bar Amrika” (Death to America), has been at the heart of the regime’s ideology since the revolution’s spiritual founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, branded the US “the great Satan”. Slogans and murals expressing antipathy to the US are prominent throughout Tehran and other Iranian cities. Trump’s insistence on being consulted seems even more far-fetched given that the countries have had no diplomatic relations for 46 years – a contrast with Venezuela, where the US had ties until as recently as 2019. US links with Iran were severed by the Carter administration in 1980 after revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage. Alex Vatanka, the head of the Iran programme at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, called Trump’s attempt to insert himself into Iran’s choice of leader “beyond delusional” and questioned whether he had a workable plan to impose a Venezuela-type scenario. “Regime change would have been much easier than converting existing Shia militant Islamists to the Maga movement, which is basically what he is asking for,” Vatanka said. He added that outside influence was possible, due to individuals in “what’s left of the inner circle of Khamenei” working with foreign intelligence services. “But you still need to have a game plan,” he said. “You need to decide who inside the regime you can work with. Then – together with that group – you either convince the others who are fighting right now to co-opt them, or you help the Americans kill them. “That way someone can emerge as the top man and do what Rodríguez is doing in Venezuela … But I have seen nothing to suggest to me that that level thinking has gone into what the US is doing right now. They might decide to pull out, saying: ‘We killed Khamenei, there are no nukes left, the missile launchers are destroyed.’ “It’s open warfare, and in such a situation, it becomes even harder for anyone who is left in the regime to want to suggest that they’re willing to work with the US … They’ll be killed before they get out of bed the following day.” Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst at the thinktank International Crisis Group, said the US and surviving regime insiders may have a shared interest in continuity, but warned this could risk alienating the bulk of Iran’s population, which is still angry over the bloody suppression of recent protests at a cost of thousands of lives. “Even if the system has a shrinking base of ideological adherents, those adherents probably feel that this is the endgame if they don’t band together. So you may have a rallying of the wagons,” he said. “The neatest outcome for Washington is securing change within continuity – finding a partner that can quickly forge a critical mass of the Iranian system on terms the US can live with,” Rafati added. “But that ambition faces two challenges: finding enough voices within the regime to accept change, and leaving many Iranians disaffected from continuity.” Experts believe the real choice over Iran’s next leader lies with the powerful Revolutionary Guards, which controls Iran’s military policy as well as large swathes of the economy. South America specialists believe Trump’s apparent desire to repeat “the Delcy model” reflects his emboldenment at Washington’s seemingly successful appropriation of the remnants of Maduro’s authoritarian regime. “You had no loss of aircraft, no loss of US service members, you got a government that had been portrayed to him at least as being implacably hostile, that’s now very accommodating. You have a country with immense natural resources [that as Trump sees it] are newly available to the United States,” said Gedan. But, the former White House adviser added, beyond the fact that Iran is much further away and better armed than Venezuela, it is far too early to tell whether Trump’s gambit has even worked in South America. “A year from now, if the US navy is not still sitting in the Caribbean, the Venezuelans, little by little, might feel like they have some breathing room all of a sudden and some autonomy again,” Gedan predicted. The distraction of conflict in the Middle East might even benefit Maduro’s successors as they seek to outlive Trump and extend their 27-year rule. “Their plan is not to be a puppet regime forever,” Gedan said. “Their plan is to hope the US moves on.”

US officials increase security over fear of attack by Iran amid US-Israel bombing

Government officials across the US have taken new security measures because of fears that Iran, or its supporters, may launch attacks on targets in America to retaliate for the US and Israel’s bombing of the country. Federal and local public officials have announced that they have taken steps such as increasing law enforcement patrols to prevent any attack, which could come directly from the Iranian regime or a lone actor, security experts said. “If there were ever a time when Iran would want to put into place all the different capabilities it’s built up over these years as off-the-shelf operational planning … now would be it,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the counter-terrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. After the US attacked Iran on 28 February, Kash Patel, the FBI director, posted on X that he had instructed “counterterrorism and intelligence teams to be on high alert and mobilize all assisting security assets needed”. Donald Trump, asked about the possibility of Iran attacking the US mainland, said this week: “I guess ... We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kristi Noem, who was fired on Thursday but retains the role until the end of March, also posted that she was in “direct coordination with our federal intelligence and law enforcement partners as we continue to closely monitor and thwart any potential threats to the homeland”. Leaders of major American cities including Los Angeles, Miami and New York have announced increased patrols around sensitive locations such as places of worship, cultural centers and schools. Rebecca Weiner, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter-terrorism for the NYPD, told CBS News the city had been in a “heightened threat environment” since June, when the US aided Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. She said the recent attacks on Iran were “definitely an escalation” and that the city would feature “enhanced deployments, patrol resources, specialized resources, the help of partners”. “They are not telling you exactly what they’re doing, and they are not saying, ‘This is where we are going to be,’” said Richard Frankel, a retired FBI agent and ABC News contributor. “That is good” because “it’s an air of mystery where if anyone wanted to do harm, all they know is that the police are going to be active, but they don’t know how.” The security experts expressed concern about Iran hiring people to commit terrorism in the US or inspiring people to do so. Law enforcement is investigating whether the Iran war motivated the man who wore a “Property of Allah” hoodie when he shot and killed two people and injured 14 on Sunday at a bar in Austin, Texas. In 2016, a man describing himself as a sleeper agent with the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah told the FBI that if the US ever went to war with Iran, a sleeper cell would be called upon to act, according to a report authored by Levitt. Iran could attack through “operatives that they have had here of their own” or “guns for hire from crew organizations or just trying to inspire people to carry out acts of terrorism”, Levitt said. Iran could also launch cyber-attacks against the US, as it has previously. After Israel and the US, during the Obama administration, deployed a cyberworm, Stuxnet, to delay Iran’s nuclear program, the country started using distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against US banks. “We could easily see that again, and that of course prevented millions of people from online banking, and we’re only more reliant on that now than we were 15 years ago,” said Jake Braun, executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago and former acting principal deputy national cyber director under Joe Biden. In addition to banks, Iran could also use cyberweapons to spread election disinformation and attack water and oil infrastructure, Braun said. In 2012, Iran, according to US intelligence, hacked Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company. “I would be surprised if we don’t see something else that goes after energy markets,” Braun said. While the US is well prepared for a direct attack from Iran, Braun said, “attacks against our banking infrastructure, or radicalizing individuals to do soft target attacks … are incredibly hard to defend against”. “We don’t really provide the support for those civilian entities, whether they be a water utility or a bank or election jurisdiction, to protect themselves from a nation state. These attacks, by design, live in this kind of nebulous world between civilian and military existence,” Braun said. The upheaval at the FBI and the DHS during Donald Trump’s second term could also hurt their ability to address the Iran threat, some of the experts said. The FBI has reassigned almost half of the agents working in the US’s major field offices to aid immigration enforcement rather than work on preventing cybercrimes, drug trafficking and terrorism, the Guardian reported in October. “There has been a bit of a brain drain from some of the federal law enforcement agencies,” Levitt said. Days before the Iran attack, Patel also laid off at least a dozen FBI staffers from a counterintelligence unit whose work included investigating threats from the Iranian regime, the New York Sun reported. Patel reportedly fired them because of their role in the investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents found at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort. “There is the potential for having lost some constitutional memory and capabilities,” Levitt said. “But overall, I think that we are well positioned to be able to capture the threat. Problem is the counter-terrorism people have to get it right every single time, and the bad guys have to get it right once.” Still, none of the experts suggested that people should panic. “I don’t think we have to change everything we do,” Frankel said. “I do think, though, that we have to be aware of our surroundings” and “it sounds kind of trite, but if you see something, say something”.

Iran’s president says ‘some countries’ have begun mediation efforts to end war

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has said for the first time that some countries have begun mediation efforts to end the war with the US and Israel, without identifying those countries, adding that any talks should address those who started the war. Qatar, Turkey, Egypt and Oman have all offered to mediate at some point since US and Israel launched joint strikes last Saturday. Two days ago, Iran’s foreign ministry said it was a time for defence of the country, not for diplomacy. Pezeshkian said in a post on X: “Some countries have begun mediation efforts. Let’s be clear: we are committed to lasting peace in the region yet we have no hesitation in defending our nation’s dignity and sovereignty. Mediation should address those who underestimated the Iranian people and ignited this conflict.” The war began while Iran was involved in talks with the US about its nuclear programme. US and Israeli strikes last June also began while nuclear negotiations were taking place. Recent statements from the US and Israel have given no indication of a willingness to come to the table anytime soon. Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said late on Thursday that firepower over Iran was about to “surge dramatically”, while the Israel Defense Forces announced a new and intensified phase of the campaign on Friday morning. At various points since the start of the war, Pezeshkian has said it is too late for Iran to negotiate. Overall, he has placed more emphasis on finding a new leadership for Iran in order to avoid a complete regime change, which is the preference of the Israelis. Pezeshkian’s remarks came as Iran’s diminished alliance of reformist groups said Tehran should appoint a supreme leader who would both challenge US propaganda that Iran is a war-mongering country and reduce domestic polarisation. The Reform Front, which helped Pezeshkian become president 18 months ago, suggested that attacks on non-military US assets in the region were diminishing global support for Iran as a victim of a blatant aggression, according to comments cited in a report by the Iranian newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad. “The election of a new leadership of the regime could convey a message of peace and friendship with the world, and thus strengthen anti-war protests on the global stage,” the Reform Front said, according to the report. “[It] should also convey the message of the beginning of a new era in Iran; an era that promises the participation of all political and civil tastes and tendencies in the governance of the country.” An attempt by the regime to rely on only part of society to win the war would be a “very big and unforgivable mistake”, it added. The group did not identify its favoured candidate or name anyone it believes would hinder national unity. The choice of leader is made by the 88-strong assembly of experts. Currently the government is run by a temporary tripartite council. Widespread reports suggest Donald Trump opposes the idea of Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei succeeding him as supreme leader. Releasing political prisoners and civil activists in a general amnesty was a necessity, the reformists said. They said in a war against an enemy possessing “the most advanced military and information technologies”, society could only remain resilient if there was national unity and cohesion. Although reformists are a weakened force inside Iran, the criticism, expressed in the context of defending the homeland, is one of the few signs of an internal debate about how the country can end its international isolation, and whether the attacks on Gulf states will prove counterproductive. There had been reports of a widespread release of prominent political prisoners, but later it was suggested the only prisoner who had been released was Ali Shakouri-Rad, a senior reformist politician. He was arrested last month a few days after a private meeting was leaked in which he accused security bodies of deliberately escalating and even staging violence including alleged killings among their own ranks to legitimise January’s sweeping crackdown on protests. He is suffering medical issues. The Reform Front, arguing that Iran needed to attract regional and global support and cooperation, said expanding retaliatory attacks would “remove Iran from the position of being oppressed and a victim of aggression, causing an inevitable reaction from the governments of the region and their joining the global consensus against Iran, and as a result, reducing our diplomatic capacity to end the war”. It also called on “all components in Iranian society – whether Turks, Kurds, Lors, Arabs, Baluchis, Turkmens, Persians, etc to defend Iran’s national identity, independence, and territorial integrity”. The reformists added that opportunities were lost when recommendations from the pre-eminent reformist leader Seyyed Mohammad Khatami and the Reform Front itself last summer were not heeded. While utterly condemning the US-Israeli aggression, the group also said Iran would be in a stronger position diplomatically and in terms of social cohesion if calls for the release of political prisoners had been heeded last summer after the 12-day war. The Reform Front – whose leadership was the subject of recent mass arrests by the security services – said Israel’s goal was chaos, civil war, and the disintegration of Iran. Pezeshkian’s son Yousef said the government needed to decide what it wanted its ideal postwar scenario to be as that would determine “the decisions taken, the operations we carry out and the words we say”. He openly discussed the factors at play that would determine the outcome of the war, saying the key assessment was whether Iran’s “endurance [will] be greater than [that of] the enemy”. This will rest in part on the issue of weapons stockpiles. In the main, state-aligned Iranian TV and websites are focusing on the stated military successes of the security forces, or on civilian deaths, with little being broadcast about the damage being inflicted on Iranian missile launchers and security apparatus.

Italy wins claim over name of Spanish restaurant chain The Mafia Sits at the Table

A Spanish restaurant chain called The Mafia Sits at the Table may soon have to change its name after the country’s patent and trademark office heeded objections from the Italian government and ruled that the brand’s nomenclature ran counter to “both public order and morality”. Italy has pursued its claim against the chain – known in Spanish as La Mafia se sienta a la mesa – through various courts and official bodies over the past few years, alleging that the name trivialises both organised crime and efforts to fight it. In 2018, the EU Intellectual Property Office ruled that the name was invalid as it conveyed a “globally positive image” of the mafia. It added that the brand was “therefore likely to shock or offend not only the victims of that criminal organisation and their families, but also any person who, on EU territory, encounters that mark and has average sensitivity and tolerance thresholds”. Eight years later, the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office has also ruled in favour of Italy and declared the name of the chain to be invalid. The chain, which can appeal the decision, had argued that it had taken its name from a recipe book rather than the criminal organisation, and that the word “mafia” was no longer exclusively associated with illegal activity. The ruling noted that the company had said that “the term mafia is indeed used in other industries such as audiovisual or literary, and the Spanish public identifies this term as an allusion to a cultural phenomenon, rather than a criminal organisation.” But it also pointed out that Italy had explained that the word applied to a global criminal organisation that also operated in Spain: “As [Italy] notes, the most common crimes of said organisation are, among other things, the smuggling of drugs and weapons, organised crime, piracy, money laundering, corruption of public officials and murders.” Ruling in favour of Italy’s application, the office said: “The controversial name runs counter to both public order and morality. The main name directly reproduces the name of a real criminal organisation, whose activity is not a remote or merely literary phenomenon, but a persistent reality.” The chain described the ruling as “unprecedented in Spain” and said it was considering an appeal. It also said it had successfully renewed its trademark with the office several times over the past two decades, and had tried to discuss the case directly with Italy’s ambassador to Spain. “Over the years, we have tried on numerous occasions to explain the origin and meaning of our name, but we haven’t had a real opportunity to do so,” said company sources. “As has always been the case, we are uninvolved and distance ourselves from any negative connotations attributed to us by the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office and the Italian embassy. Our focus is on continuing to build the company’s future, and we remain true to the essence of the project: a high-quality Italian-Mediterranean culinary offering and a distinctive dining experience.”

Italian activists and journalist targeted by spyware in 2024, prosecutors confirm

Italian prosecutors investigating a domestic spying scandal say they have independently confirmed that two immigration activists and a journalist were hacked at the same time in late 2024, suggesting all three were part of the same “infection campaign”. The development could bring more questions for the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni, who has denied any involvement in the hacking of the journalist, the Fanpage editor-in-chief, Francesco Cancellato. The controversy over the hacking claims erupted in early 2025, when WhatsApp revealed it had discovered that 90 people, including journalists and members of civil society, had been targeted by hacking software made by Paragon Solutions, a spyware maker founded in Israel but which is now owned by US investors. Like other spyware makers, Paragon sells use of its spyware, known as Graphite, to government agencies, who are supposed to use it to fight and prevent crime. It can hack into any phone, without users knowing their mobiles have in effect been taken over. Paragon has previously confirmed it cancelled its contract with the Italian government after reports first emerged that Cancellato had been targeted. Cancellato, whose online investigative news outlet has published critical reporting about Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, including an exposé of young fascists in the party’s youth organisation, was the first person in Italy to come forward publicly. More victims emerged, including Giuseppe Caccia and Luca Casarini, two pro-immigrant activists. A subsequent investigation by the Italian parliamentary committee for security (Copasir) found that Italian intelligence agencies had legally targeted Caccia and Casarini, but said they had not found evidence that Cancellato had been targeted. The findings this week by prosecutors in Rome and Naples – independent investigative bodies – marks a major departure from the previous parliamentary report, because it confirms that Cancellato was hacked. It also deepens the mystery of who targeted him, and why. In a joint statement on Thursday the prosecutors said: “Among all the mobile phones acquired by the numerous plaintiffs, traces of activity attributable to malware were found exclusively on three Android devices,” and that the “presumed period of compromise of the devices used by Casarini, Caccia and Cancellato” dated back to the early hours of 14 December 2024. “The serial execution of three attacks on the same night suggests that they may have been part of a single infection campaign,” the statement said, adding that while the investigation could not find evidence that the secret services had also spied on Cancellato, it would continue to work towards identifying the perpetrators. The scandal has contributed to a decline in press freedom in Italy, with the country’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index sliding from 41st place in 2023 to 49th in 2025. During her yearly press conference in early January, Meloni became defensive when Cancellato asked her what role her administration had played in the spying. She said it was “offering its support” to “get to the truth”, before casting herself as a victim, saying: “My life has ended up in the newspapers.” Cancellato said on Friday that the prosecutors’ report was “a small, important step towards the truth”. “It’s not much, but now I know for certain that on December 14, 2024, something really did happen on my phone, someone really did get in and steal my messages,” he added. “Now, without rushing or forcing interpretations, we need to figure out who did it … and once again, I ask politicians, the government and parliament to help me figure out who did it and to join me in calling for clarity on this matter.” Paragon has said it sells its spyware only to democratic countries and that its terms of service forbid agencies to use the technology against journalists or members of civil society. Other individuals have also said they received notifications that they had been targeted, including more pro-immigrant activists. It is unclear whether their cases were reviewed by the prosecutors. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which investigates digital threats against civil society, said the prosecutors’ findings were an important vindication of WhatsApp’s decision to alert users that they had been targeted. “Cancellato’s case has been massively inconvenient both to the Italian government and to Paragon Solutions, because it’s about a journalist getting hacked with Paragon’s ‘ethical’ spyware. Today’s announcement makes it impossible to dismiss, and immediately raises serious questions about why no confirmation was surfaced in prior official investigations by the Italian authorities. This urgently warrants further investigation,” he said.