Bolaños affirms that the appropriate decisions will be made when all the information is available and assures that he has no record of espionage against former Minister González-Laya
The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, does not guarantee the continuity in his position of the director of the CNI, Paz Esteban, after this Monday the Government denounced – in full storm for the alleged espionage of more than sixty politicians, activists and lawyers of the pro-independence world – that both the telephone of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and that of the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, were infected with the Pegasus malware in May and June 2021,
Bolaños has responded today elusively to the specific question of whether the head of the Spanish intelligence services should continue in office. “The director of the CNI is still at the CNI, she is working to clarify the facts and that – she has limited herself to saying, in the SER – is the phase we are in.” “We are going to have complete information and that will be the basis for any decision we can make in the future,” he also said at another point in the interview.
In a similar line, the Spokesperson Minister, Isabel Rodríguez, has affirmed, after the Council of Ministers, that both Minister Robles and Paz Esteban have the support of the President of the Government. However, to the express question of whether the latter will continue in office, she has replied succinctly: “We cannot talk about futures.” «Each moment has its eagerness. We are in the phase of clarifying what has happened and to whom-she said afterwards-. We can’t move on to the next moment without knowing what’s happened so far.”
Esteban will appear this week before the official secrets commission to report on the investigations carried out in the organization he directs regarding the report by the cybersecurity group at the University of Toronto Citizen Lab, published two weeks ago by the New Yorker, in which uncovered the alleged illegal surveillance of the independence movement. The Generalitat and the main partners of the Executive, including the minority partner of the coalition, United We Can, have been warning for days, however, that the seriousness of the situation requires dismissals.
In the crosshairs of the secessionist parties and Podemos is the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles. However, the Government transmitted last Thursday that her head is not in danger and Sánchez himself responded with a “of course” to the question of whether he supports her. The next in line of command, in that case, would be the person in charge of the CNI. And Esquerra’s spokesman in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, pointed to her directly this morning by stating that in any democracy her continuity in her position would be “unsustainable.”
unknown authorship
Bolaños and Rodríguez have insisted, in any case, that it is now necessary to collect all the available information, although they have admitted that it is already evident that security protocols must be reinforced while at the same time stressing that “all” countries suffer attacks from this same tenor. The minister has placed special emphasis on the fact that there are still many things that are unknown, among them, the authorship of the punctures, and he has asked not to speculate.
It so happens that the infections on the telephones of Sánchez and Robles coincide with the time when pardons were being prepared for those convicted of 1-O, but also with the ‘Ghali case’ that caused a confrontation with Morocco and charged the head of the then Foreign Minister, Arancha González Laya. Several media outlets publish that her phone was also attacked with Pegasus, an Israeli program to which, in principle, only States have access.
Bolaños has replied, however, that he is not aware of the infection on González Laya’s phone, that until now they have only been able to prove those of Sánchez and Robles and that everything else is “conjecture”. «We do not know who it could have been, perhaps we will know it in a while and we will make it known; it is more – he has added -, we will communicate it to the judge».
State Height
The minister has also taken the opportunity to attack the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, for having hinted this Monday that, by now making the espionage of the chief executive public, the government is trying to create a smokescreen to mitigate the discomfort of his parliamentary allies.
After assuring that the interference in the telephones of Sánchez and Robles were not known until Saturday, he has affirmed that the PP was informed of what was happening before it was made public (according to the popular just a few seconds before the appearance of Bolaños and the Minister Spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, in La Moncloa). «I miss a true height of State to Mr. Feijóo; what happened yesterday shows that the PP has something atavistic that prevents it from exercising it », he has reproached.
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