The National Intelligence Center (CNI) denied on Thursday having spied on either ERC MEP Jordi Solé or Oriol Junqueras’ lawyer, Andreu Van den Eynde. The current director of the center, Esperanza Casteleiro, has denied these alleged cases of espionage which are being investigated by the Court of Instruction number 24 of Barcelona in two different cases for which the head of the intelligence center testified by videoconference. His predecessor in power, Paz Esteban, also said the case was under investigation. Both of them stuck to the denial of this statement without going any further, protected by the Spanish law on secrets.
The government has already recognized 18 cases of espionage against pro-independence political figures. Van den Enynde, as Solé’s lawyer, asked Esteban if he was aware of the existence of expert reports confirming the infection of his cell phone with the Pegasus malware. His response was positive.
Solé filed a complaint for alleged espionage in June 2022, while ERC’s lawyer filed a complaint against the CNI a few months earlier. Both consider that their cell phones were attacked with Pegasus and this is indicated in the expertise carried out by Citizen Lab that they presented in the case. The Barcelona court rejected the idea that, as happened in other similar cases, the Mossos d’Esquadra prepared their own report.
In the case of Van den Eynde, as he himself stated, he was spied on during a video conference with the rest of the lawyers in 2020 who defended the pro-independence leaders accused in the trial of process.
According to Solé’s accusation, his case would be particularly serious because in addition to violating the secrecy of communications and privacy, it would also go against his parliamentary immunity. Solé requested that NSO be considered directly under investigation, marking the first investigation against the company that created and marketed Pegasus. At the heart of this request was to clarify the role of the Israeli multinational, for which questions rogatory were opened to Israel and Luxembourg.
Esperanza Casteleiro, director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), admitted on December 1 that the CNI had spied on Catalan National Assembly leaders Jordi Sànchez and Elisenda Paluzie in 2019 and 2020. This investigation, Casteleiro said, was protected by the Supreme Court.
Casteleiro indicated that she could give this information because the Council of Ministers had authorized her to give this classified information, but she did not specify whether the espionage was carried out with the Pegasus software, which has the power to access all the data on a cell phone, or whether the telephone conversations were simply tapped.
Irídia, the entity responsible for the defense of human rights and responsible for the defense of Van den Eynde through lawyer Brian Ventura, denounced after the appearances that the government and the CNI contain “without giving explanations” on one of the largest cases of espionage with Pegasus in Europe. A Citizen Lab report confirmed that around 60 people had been spied on.
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