On July 25, the pegasus case —the alleged massive interception of the cell phones of Catalan pro-independence leaders with an Israeli spy program in the years of the process— first came to the table of the Council of Ministers. In its last meeting before the holidays, the acting government examined the request for declassification of secret information raised by the head of the Investigating Court number 20 of Barcelona, who is investigating a complaint for alleged espionage presented by the president of the Esquerra parliamentary group Republican of Catalonia (ERC) in the Catalan Parliament, Josep María Jové, and the spokesperson for the same party in the European Parliament, Diana Riba.
The first alleged that her mobile phone had been infected with the spy virus while negotiating the investiture of the socialist Pedro Sánchez in 2019, while the second argued that conversations about her husband, Raül Romeva, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Generalitat convicted and later pardoned by the process.
The request for declassification, raised last April by the judge, responded to a resolution of the Provincial Court of Barcelona that agreed with the lawyer of the two republicans, Andreu Van den Eynde, and ordered that the Israeli company be cited as investigated NSO Group, owner of the Pegasus program, and as a witness Esperanza Castelerio, director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI). To prevent this from hiding behind the classified nature of the matter, the judge opted to previously submit a request for declassification to the Government.
The court brief consisted of three sections. I was asking first if the Spanish secret service has the software Israeli spy; then claimed the identity of the supplier and the conditions of the acquisition; and finally inquired if it has been used to spy on the two complainants, Jové and Riba. The government’s response, as EL PAÍS has learned from sources familiar with it, is one of lime and the other of sand.
On the one hand, the Government refuses to answer the first two questions, alleging that it cannot reveal the “sources and means” of the secret service, classified by the CNI regulatory law of May 2002, without jeopardizing the activity of the secret service. center. However, it authorizes the chief of the spies to testify in court, although it anticipates that the two complainants, Jové and Riba, were never investigated by the CNI. Thus, if the judge deems it appropriate, Casteleiro will appear as a witness before the court, but he will not be able to give many more details than what the Government advances and will insist that the ERC leaders were never under the center’s radar.
The names of Jové and Riba were on the list of 65 pro-independence leaders allegedly spied on between 2015 and 2020 -63 of them with the Pegasus program- that in April 2022 was made public by Citizen Lab, a laboratory at the University of Toronto (Canada).
What affects the most is what happens closer. To not miss anything, subscribe.
subscribe
Suspicions were immediately directed to the CNI, since this program is only sold to government agencies, but the then director of the spy center, Paz Esteban, who appeared behind closed doors before the Congressional Official Secrets Commission, only acknowledged having spied on 18 of the 65 members of the list and always with judicial authorization. Among the politicians that the CNI admits to having spied on was the current president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, when he was vice president, but not Jové y Riba. Citizen Lab, for its part, has only admitted one mistake in its list, that of having included former Minister Toni Comín, a fugitive from Spanish Justice like former President Puigdemont, whose acronym they had confused with someone else’s.
Despite the fact that the dismissal of Paz Esteban and his replacement by Casteleiro, the week after the former appeared in Congress, subsided the political storm generated by the scandal, the pegasus case It has continued to cloud the government’s relations with the Catalan separatists. As part of the agreement that allowed, last week, the election of Francina Armengol as president of Congress, the Socialists agreed to create a commission of investigation in Congress on the case and they promised not to veto any appearance. According to the CNI law, it is the Official Secrets Commission, and not a possible investigation commission, that can have access to classified information on the operation and activities of the secret service, so its room for maneuver can be very limited. .
It will be the third parliamentary commission of inquiry into the pegasus case. Jové himself chairs the commission created in the Parliament of Catalonia, before which President Pedro Sánchez and his predecessor Mariano Rajoy, among others, have refused to appear. For its part, the European Parliament commission concluded in May with a report in which it asked the Spanish authorities for a “complete, fair and exhaustive investigation” of the alleged espionage.
In the tribunals
The case opened by court number 20 of Barcelona is the first on the pegasus case that reaches the table of the Council of Ministers, but not the only one that is being investigated. In the courts of Barcelona and in the National High Court, half a dozen judges are investigating charges of alleged espionage with the Israeli program, so far with little success. The first complaint was filed in July 2020, before the Citizen Lab report was made public, by the then president of the Catalan Parliament, Roger Torrent, and deputy Ernest Maragall, both from ERC. The head of court 32 filed it because Israel did not answer the letters rogatory sent and Torrent and Maragall, unlike Jové and Riba, did not provide their mobile phones so that an independent expert opinion could be carried out. The same court 32 received the complaints from three CUP deputies allegedly spied on, while the lawsuit by President Aragonès went to the Investigating Court 29 of Barcelona, which tried to disqualify itself in favor of the National Court, although the Provincial Court has forced to undertake the investigation.
It is in the National Court where the other side of the pegasus case: the infection of the mobile phones of President Pedro Sánchez and the Ministers of the Interior, Defense and Agriculture, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Margarita Robles and Luis Planas, in May and June 2021, coinciding with the diplomatic crisis with Morocco. The complaint, which was filed in May 2022, in full controversy over the so-called Catalangate, was instructed by the head of the Central Court number 4, José Luis Calama, Last July, the magistrate decreed the provisional dismissal of the case, alleging that “the absolute lack of collaboration” on the part of Israel, which has ignored the successive letters rogatory , prevented clarifying the authorship of a cyberattack that involved the theft of large amounts of information and, according to the judge, could “put national security in check.”
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#Government #lime #sand #judicial #petition #Pegasus #case