Investigations into the spying on pro-independence leaders continue, with difficulties and obstacles, in the courts of Barcelona. The government has received the third request from an investigating judge in the Catalan capital to declassify data on the “purchase” of the Pegasus spy program by the National Intelligence Center (CNI) and its “possible use” against former ERC MP Jordi Solé.
The Justice Ministry has refused to take on the investigation into the spying on dozens of pro-independence activists carried out by the CNI in a single macro-case, which has led half a dozen courts in Barcelona to investigate in parallel the successive complaints directed against the Israeli company that sells the spyware, NSO Group, and against the intelligence center.
So far, the results have been few and far between, and the investigations are far from leading to a complete clarification of the facts, with the exception of the case involving the former president of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès, whom the CNI has already admitted to having spied on. Its procedure is the only one in which a former government official, the former director of the Paz Esteban center, who left office in 2022 to try to contain the anger of the separatists, remains indicted. A case that has not had any other political consequences but that has revealed the deficiencies in the CNI’s control.
According to the report of the private forensic laboratory Citizen Lab, which corroborated the infection by Pegasus in the mobile phones of 65 independentists from all parties and social entities, the infections in Solé’s mobile phone occurred on June 11 and 27, 2020, shortly before assuming the seat of Oriol Junqueras, and therefore, formally, without the legal protection of immunity enjoyed by all MEPs.
In Solé’s case, the judge investigating his espionage has requested several investigative measures, in addition to asking the government to declassify confidential data. The judge, who is also investigating the espionage of ERC lawyer Andreu Van den Eynde, has decided to open an investigation into the company NSO Group for revealing secrets and has requested various information on the sale and use of spyware.
The judge thus follows the line of other magistrates in Barcelona, who have not, however, encountered any collaboration from the company: successive requests addressed to both Israel and Luxembourg, where NSO has its European subsidiary, the judges have not received any clarification. answers on the sale of the Pegasus program to the CNI or on the destination of the servers where the data captured on the intercepted mobile phones were stored. To the silence of Israel and Luxembourg must be added that of Ireland, where several infiltrated servers are said to remain.
The investigation into the selling company has not been fruitful, but the government’s collaboration requested by three judges in Barcelona has not had much success either. Consulted by elDiario.es, the Ministry of Justice has refused to clarify whether the government has already accepted the declassification of the documents requested by the judge regarding the espionage of Solé, who did not repeat himself on the lists of the last European elections in June and now works in the private sector.
The Executive responded in the opposite way to the two previous requests. The Government did agree to declassify the documents on Aragonès’ espionage, but far from the volume of information required by the judge to determine the total amount of information extracted and how much the purchase of Pegasus cost the public coffers (a fact still unknown).
The government only partially declassified (the documents contained many censored parts) the three Supreme Court orders that agreed to spy on Aragonès. Of course, in the resolutions, the fragments that could “lead to knowledge of the means or procedures of the CNI” were expressly hidden. This is the same argument that the Executive used to refuse to provide the magistrate with information on who, at the CNI, had decided to buy Pegasus and where the data on Aragonès’ espionage was stored. According to the government, providing this information could endanger the CNI’s sources.
On the other hand, the government had rejected the first request of a judge in Barcelona to lift the secrecy of the information. Last July, the Executive denied that the CNI had spied on Republicans Josep Maria Jové and Diana Riba, also a MEP this legislature, because they were not part of the list of 18 names that Esteban admitted to spying on with the approval of the Supreme Court. Tribunal. Therefore, he refused to declassify the documentation regarding the purchase of Israeli malware. The government’s denial was partly denied by the Mossos, who, after expertly analyzing Jové and Riba’s phones, found signs of infection.
