The head of the Spanish secret services, who admitted this Thursday that Catalan independence fighters were spied on by Madrid, is in danger of becoming the head of an espionage scandal that has endangered the stability of the Pedro Sánchez government.
(Also read: Chuzados by ‘Pegasus’)
First woman at the head of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) and until now unknown to public opinion, Paz Esteban was questioned this Thursday for four hours in the parliamentary commission of “official secrets”behind closed doors.
According to deputies who participated in the hearing, such as the number two of the Popular Party (PP, right), Cuca Gamarra, Esteban acknowledged that the secret services spied on several independentistasalthough always with the authorization of justice.
The head of the CNI specified, according to various Spanish media, that 18 pro-independence activists were monitored, including the current Catalan president, Pere Aragonésa figure much lower than the more than 60 separatists identified in a report by the Canadian organization Citizen Lab.
Said report on April 18, according to which the phones of more than 60 people from the separatist orbit were infected between 2017 and 2020 with Israeli spyware Pegasusgenerated a crisis between the executive and its Catalan pro-independence allies, who accuse the secret services of being behind the monitoring.
The matter took a surprising turn on Monday, when the government announced that Pedro Sánchez and his Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, were also spied on using the same computer program in May and June 2021.
Target of attacks by Sánchez’s Catalan and Basque allies, the head of the CNI, who has held the position since 2020, does not have clear support from the government. Asked about a possible dismissal of Paz Esteban, the government spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, limited herself to saying on Tuesday that she could not “talk about the future.”
The Minister of Defense is weakened
The Defense Minister, on whose office the CNI depends, He has been the only member of the executive who has defended Paz Esteban.
But Robles is equally in the sights of the Catalan independentistas, as well as the radical left of Podemos, a minority partner of Pedro Sánchez’s socialists in the government, a formation that asks for his head.
(You may be interested in: Espionage: the cases of famous victims of Pegasus)
“You know what you have to do, not only for your dignity, but also for the dignity of the government”Pablo Echenique, parliamentary spokesman for Podemos, launched to Robles on Wednesday in Congress.
In an attempt to put out the fire, Sánchez promised last week to “be accountable” for the case. Besides, he was the first head of state or government to confirm having been spied on by Pegasus.
The questions continue
Politically very sensitive, this espionage scandal has the potential to derail the leftist government.
The Catalan separatists of ERC, whose support in Parliament is key to Sánchez’s minority government, warned on Tuesday that this crisis “can be loaded (kill) the legislature” before its endplanned for the end of 2023.
The espionage issue has left numerous questions that remain unanswered to this day.
Although the government assures that the hacking of the telephones of Sánchez and his Minister of Defense was the product of an “external attack”, it has said that it does not know its origin, while the Spanish press speculates that Moroccowith whom Madrid has just closed a diplomatic crisis of almost a year, could be behind.
Several political parties have also questioned the exact moment when the government revealed the espionage it suffered, wondering if the executive actually knew about these attacks beforehand and decided to make them public just to calm the Catalan independentistas, thus showing himself to be another victim of Pegasus.
The government claimed that it only learned of this last weekend.
AFP
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