A spy case worthy of the Bureau of Legends. The former head of the Spanish intelligence services was indicted this Monday by the Spanish justice system. She is suspected of having spied on the Catalan independence regional president, Pere Aragonès, using Pegasus software.
Paz Esteban, who paid the bill for this scandal by being dismissed last year by the government of Pedro Sánchez, was summoned by the Barcelona judge in charge of the case on December 13. In a judicial document, the magistrate, who admitted Pere Aragonès’ complaint, indicates that the facts denounced by the moderate separatist have the “characteristics” of “possible criminal offenses such as illegal listening to communications and computer espionage.” .
Dozens of separatists listened to
“We want to know who ordered the spying on the independence movement,” commented the Catalan regional president, who filed a complaint last year against Paz Esteban and against NSO, the Israeli company that designed Pegasus. This espionage scandal broke out in April 2022 after the publication of a report by the Canadian organization Citizen Lab claiming to have identified more than 60 people from the Catalan separatist movement whose cell phones were allegedly hacked via this software, which allows remotely activate the cameras and microphones of a smartphone.
The Spanish government admitted to having spied on 18, including Pere Aragonès. The affair then took on a whole new dimension with the government’s announcement that Pedro Sánchez and two of his ministers had themselves been spied on in 2021 using Pegasus. The government has always assured that it was an “external attack” but claimed not to know who could be behind it while several Spanish media have mentioned a possible involvement of Morocco in a context of serious diplomatic crisis between the two countries at the time of the events.
In July, Spanish justice announced the provisional closure of the investigation into spying on members of the government, due to the “absolute” absence of cooperation from Israel.