The European Parliament mission, which has visited Spain over the past two days to learn about the progress of the various investigations into the Pegasus case, has concluded that it is “plausible” that Morocco was behind the infection with stuck in the Israeli program that is causing official mobile phones to suffer Pedro Sánchez and three of his ministers – Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska; Defense, Margarita Robles, and Agriculture, Luis Planas – in May 2021, amid a diplomatic crisis with Rabat authorities. The head of the delegation, Dutchman Jeroen Lenaers, explained that although “it is not clear who was spying on the Spanish government, the references point to third countries, including Morocco”. Lenaers has stressed that the lack of conclusive evidence “makes it necessary to investigate more”. His colleague, also Dutch Sophia In’T Veld, has echoed the same sentiments, for which what has happened to the phones of the Spanish executive and other European governments is a “rather worrying” problem, one at European level must be examined and not only within the country. Both said they had asked Europol, the EU police force, to take part in the investigation.
The espionage of Sánchez and his ministers has been under investigation in Spain since April 26 last year by the judge of the National Court, José Luis Calama, after he filed a complaint from the public prosecutor’s office that their mobile phones had been infected. The government, which has publicly denounced the interference in the Pegasus program, has at all times avoided pointing to the responsibility of Morocco or any other country. The judicial investigation has so far led to the taking of testimonies from several victims and from those responsible for ensuring the security of executive branch communications at the time of the spying, including then-director of the Center National Intelligence Agency (CNI), Paz Esteban , dismissed as a result of this event, but with minimal progress.
This complaint came amid a political storm following a report by Citizen Lab, a group of analysts affiliated with the University of Toronto (Canada), alleging that 63 people linked to the Catalan independence movement were allegedly linked to Pegasus had been attacked. The CNI later admitted to having carried out 18 of these interventions, including the one suffered by the current President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, but hid behind the fact that it had judicial authorization. In fact, the European Parliament’s commission of inquiry that visited Spain focused much of its efforts on solving the espionage of these 63 people, as the two Dutch representatives stressed at a press conference.
“Inadequate” declarations by the government
The declared aim of the visit was “to better understand the control mechanisms in place in this country to prevent any illegal use of spyware”. It is precisely for this reason that its members met with Aragonès this Tuesday; Foreign Minister Meritxell Serret and ERC candidate for Barcelona mayor Ernest Maragall, three of the victims. The Catalan President has complained to the commission of inquiry about the “inadequate” explanations given by the Spanish government on espionage by the independentistas. “Nobody has officially contacted me to answer the following questions: Who is responsible? Who knew? Who authorized the wiretapping, for what purpose? Who received the reports and where is the data stored and what information from us does the CNI have in principle?” he asked the deputies.
The European mission, consisting of 10 deputies who arrived in Spain after visits to Israel, Poland, Greece, Cyprus and Hungary, will draw up a text with conclusions, which, as Lenaers has put forward, will contain the recommendation to review the official secrecy law and the framework of the CNI. The head of the mission also called on the Spanish government to “cooperate with the courts” investigating the Independentistas’ espionage and give victims “more information and transparency”. For her part, Sophia In’T Veld, who is responsible for writing the paper, expressed her concern about the “invasive” nature of the spyware, reminding governments, including the Spanish one, that they will only be used “in exceptional cases, when they exist should is a very clear and imminent threat to national security,” which raises doubts as to whether this happened in the case of the Catalan separatists.
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During the media appearances of the two members of the mission, he plotted the Spanish government’s alleged lack of cooperation in their investigations. Although Lenaers was cautious, reasoning that in the end they could only meet with one high-ranking official – Secretary of State for the European Union Pascual Navarro – on Spain’s political agenda due to the motion of no confidence that began this Tuesday The Congress, your partner has charged against the little information Madrid has provided them with. “There is little or no official information,” he said, before criticizing seeking national security protections for these types of measures: “National security is so comprehensive that it can absorb anything.” It has to be explicit,” he added. In’T Veld has defended that “ideas, no matter how crazy they may seem, cannot be the subject of ideas [una investigación por] National Security”. As a result of the visit of the Commission, a report will be drawn up, which will have to be approved by the European Parliament.
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