The Catalan regional government and the main Catalan separatists take seriously the findings of the organization Citizen Lab, according to which there has been a massive attack against them with the Israeli spy program Pegasus in recent years. According to an investigation by the Canadian organization “Citizen Lab”, cited by the American magazine “New Yorker” and the Spanish newspaper “El País”, the mobile phones of a total of 63 Catalan separatists, including three heads of government and several lawyers, say be equipped with the software that has been infiltrated. Citizen Lab is a research group at the University of Toronto specializing in cybersecurity and human rights.
Not all attacks were therefore successful. According to these findings, a Pegasus attack would also have taken place in the office of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The program of the Israeli company NSO is normally made available only to government agencies. However, the software has been discovered in over 40 countries in recent years. It was used against numerous critics of the regime and members of the opposition, but also against the French government, allegedly even President Emmanuel Macron.
Catalan regional president Pere Aragonès, who says he has also been affected, speaks of a “serious attack on democracy and fundamental rights”. It is a “massive surveillance action” against a peaceful civil movement that is “shameful and unjustified”. According to Citizen Lab investigations, former regional presidents Quim Torra, Carles Puigdemont and Artur Mas were also under surveillance. Today’s MEP Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium and whose environment would have been spied on by Pegasus, accuses Spain of a “dirty war”.
First charges as early as 2020
Among those attacked were several convicted separatists who were pardoned last year. Three of his lawyers and at least one journalist were also victims of the action, which began after the illegal referendum on Catalan independence on October 1, 2017 and lasted until at least 2020. In the report entitled “Catalangate”, which alludes to the scandal American Watergate, the “Citizen Lab” leaves open who could be behind the attacks. The Spanish police and the Madrid government assured “El País” in 2020 that they did not own the program. At the time, the Spanish secret service CNI evasively responded to a request and emphasized that legal requirements were being observed.
The first accusations were made in July 2020. At that time, the then president of the Catalan regional parliament, Roger Torrent, accused the Spanish government of “spying on political opponents”. The newspapers “El País” and “Guardian” reported that, in addition to Torrent, three other Catalan separatists were spied on with the help of Pegasus. This is former Catalonia foreign affairs commissioner Ernest Maragall, who ran for mayor of Barcelona in 2019. Additionally, members of the radical CUP party Anna Gabriel who fled to Switzerland and another separatist activist were reportedly targeted. of the attacks discovered by the “Citizen Laboratory”.
Citizen Lab claims to have found references to Pegasus in the office of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. However, according to press reports on Tuesday, the head of the Cyber Security Center has not yet identified which device was attacked. Between 2020 and 2021, five attacks using spyware were also discovered on British Foreign Office phones. The EU Commission now wants to take action against the use of Pegasus. Europe could do a much better job of convincing the rest of the world of the value of data protection if such software were not used in the EU, European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said in an April interview.
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