The Catalan regional president, Pere Aragonès, spied on like other separatists using the Pegasus software, filed a complaint on Wednesday against the former director of the Spanish secret services Paz Esteban and the Israeli company NSO which designed this spy program.
This complaint, filed in a Barcelona court and consulted by AFP, denounces facts
of "unauthorized intrusion into computer equipment
", "
illegal interception of communications
" and "
computer espionage
".
The government admitted the wiretapping
According to the complaint, Pere Aragonès' phone was spied on in January 2020 when he was vice-president of the region.
Pere Aragonès does not rule out having also been once president of the region in May 2021. In a report published in mid-April, the Canadian organization Citizen Lab claimed to have identified 60 people from the Catalan separatist movement whose laptops allegedly hacked between 2017 and 2020 using Pegasus software.
The government admitted that 18 separatists, including Pere Aragonès, had been wiretapped with the green light of justice.
These revelations had led the Catalan separatists to threaten to withdraw their support for the minority government of Pedro Sanchez.
Weakened by this scandal, the executive announced on May 10 the ousting of Paz Esteban, the first woman to have been appointed head of the National Intelligence Center (CNI).
Pedro Sanchez then announced at the end of May a reform of the intelligence services in order to "
strengthen judicial control
" of wiretapping.
But the Catalan separatists had deemed these announcements insufficient and demanded "
explanations
" to know "
who was aware
" of these wiretaps.
Read alsoPegasus spyware: the investigation in France entrusted to an investigating judge
This spy scandal took an unexpected turn when the government announced in May that the cell phones of Pedro Sanchez and several ministers had been spied on last year via Pegasus.
The government indicates that it is an “
external attack
”, but claims not to know who could be at the origin.
Several Spanish media have mentioned for their part a possible involvement of Morocco.
