The director of the National Intelligence Center, Esperanza Casteleiro, at the intelligence agency’s headquarters on April 17. Claudio Alvarez
On July 25, the Pegasus case – the alleged massive cell phone interception of pro-independence Catalans using an Israeli spyware program during the years of the trial – came to the Council of Ministers’ agenda for the first time. At its last session before the holidays, the incumbent government considered the request for the release of classified information made by the head of the Investigatory Court No. 20 of Barcelona, which is investigating a complaint alleging espionage filed by the President of the Parliament of Esquerra The Group of the Republican Republic Catalonia (ERC) in the Catalan Parliament, Josep María Jové, and the spokeswoman of the same party in the European Parliament, Diana Riba.
The first claimed that her mobile phone was infected with the spy virus during negotiations for the inauguration of socialist Pedro Sánchez in 2019, while the second argued that talks were held about her husband Raül Romeva, a former convicted former Secretary of State for Generalitat be pardoned by the process.
The release request, made by the judge last April, came in response to an order from the Barcelona Provincial Court, agreeing with the two Republicans’ attorney Andreu Van den Eynde, ordering that the Israeli company be classified as an NSO under investigation. group is called. Owner of the Pegasus program and as a witness Esperanza Castelerio, director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI). In order to prevent this from being hidden behind the secret nature of the matter, the judge decided to first submit a request for clearance to the government.
The court letter consisted of three sections. I first asked if the Spanish Secret Service had the Israeli spyware; then requested the identity of the supplier and the terms of the purchase; and finally inquired whether this had been used to spy on the two applicants, Jové and Riba. The government’s reaction, as EL PAÍS has learned from sources familiar with it, consists of lime and sand on the one hand.
On the one hand, the government refuses to answer the first two questions, arguing that it cannot disclose the “sources and means” of the intelligence agency, classified by the May 2002 CNI Regulation Law, without jeopardizing the agency’s activities . Center. However, it authorizes the chief of spies to testify in court, although it believes that the two plaintiffs, Jové and Riba, have never been investigated by the CNI. Therefore, if the judge sees fit, Casteleiro will appear as a witness in court, but he will not be able to give much more detail than what the government is proposing and will insist that the ERC leaders never go under the center’s radar have stood.
The names Jové and Riba were on the list of 65 pro-independence advocates allegedly spied on between 2015 and 2020 – 63 of them with the Pegasus program – published in April 2022 by Citizen Lab, a laboratory at the University of Toronto ( Canada).
What affects most is what happens closer. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything.
subscribe to
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 official Congressional Intelligence Commission, only admitted to having spied on 18 of 65 Members of the list and always with judicial approval. 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. For its part, Citizen Lab has admitted only one mistake in its list, namely ex-minister Toni Comín, a fugitive from Spanish justice like ex-president Puigdemont, whose acronym they had confused with someone else’s.
Although the firing of Paz Esteban and his replacement by Casteleiro the week after his appearance in Congress eased the political storm created by the scandal, the Pegasus case continued to sour the government’s relations with the Independentistas Catalans. As part of the deal that enabled Francina Armengol to be elected President of Congress last week, the Socialists agreed to set up a Congressional commission of inquiry into the case and vowed not to veto it. According to the CNI law, it is the official intelligence commission, and not a commission of inquiry, that may have access to classified information about the operations and activities of the intelligence service, so its scope of action can be very limited.
It will be the third parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Pegasus case. Jové himself chairs the commission set up in the Catalan Parliament, 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 calling on the Spanish authorities to carry out a “full, fair and comprehensive investigation” into the alleged espionage.
In the tribunals
The case, opened by Court No. 20 in Barcelona, is the first in the Pegasus case to reach the Council of Ministers table, but not the only one under investigation. In the Barcelona courts and the National Court, half a dozen judges are filing complaints alleging spying with the Israeli program, so far with little success. The first complaint was filed in July 2020, before the Citizen Lab report was published, by then-President of the Catalan Parliament, Roger Torrent, and his deputy, Ernest Maragall, both from the ERC. The President of Court 32 filed a lawsuit because Israel did not respond to the letters MLA sent and Torrent and Maragall, unlike Jové and Riba, did not provide their mobile phones so that an independent opinion could be drawn up. The same court 32 received the complaints of three CUP MPs allegedly spied on, while President Aragonès’ complaint went to the investigative court 29 of Barcelona, which tried to disqualify in favor of the national court, although the provincial court forced it to conduct the investigation.
The other side of the Pegasus case was raised in the National Court: the infection of the mobile phones of President Pedro Sánchez and Interior, Defense and Agriculture Ministers Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Margarita Robles and Luis Planas. in May and June 2021, coinciding with the diplomatic crisis with Morocco. The complaint, filed in May 2022 in complete controversy over the so-called Catalangate, was investigated by the head of the Central Court No. 4, José Luis Calama. Last July, the judge ordered the case to stay on the grounds that “the absolute lack of cooperation” on the part of Israel, which has ignored successive requests for legal assistance, has made it impossible to establish the authorship of a cyberattack that stole large amounts of information and which, in the judge’s view, could be “cleared as national security at risk”.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits