The parliamentary groups of ERC, EH Bildu and BNG have proposed this Thursday the creation in Congress of a commission of investigation into espionage with the Pegasus program of which 65 politicians, activists, journalists and lawyers were supposedly victims on their mobile phones due to their connection. to the Catalan or Basque independence movement.
This is the third investigative commission that the groups that have supported the investiture of Pedro Sánchez request in Congress, since last Friday JxCat and PNV requested two others: one on the so-called “Operation Catalunya” and the Interior actions during the PP governments against the Catalan independence movement and a second on the implications of the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on August 17, 2017.
In the petition registered this Thursday, the three groups list some of the alleged victims of espionage as published by The New Yorker and El País following the investigation by the forensic laboratories Citizen Lab (University of Toronto) and Amnesty International Security Lab.
Among them, the presidents of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès, Quim Torra and Artur Mas; Parliamentarians Roger Torrent and Laura Borràs; leaders of political parties such as Arnaldo Otegi, Marta Rovira; prominent activists such as Marcel Mauri (Òmnium Cultural) or Elisenda Paluzie (ANC) or lawyers such as Andreu Van den Eynde or Gonzalo Boye.
There are also European parliamentarians, from the Congress and the Catalan Parliament such as Jordi Solé, Antoni Comín, Diana Riba, Míriam Nogueras, Jon Iñarritu, Albert Botran, Ferran Bel, Albert Batet or Josep Maria Jové.
All of them, according to the request for the creation of this commission that was rejected in the previous legislature, would have been the subject of illegal espionage, a fact that “undermines fundamental rights, such as respect and individual protection of intimacy and privacy.”
The groups recall that this type of espionage program allows not only the interception of communications, but also absolute access to its content, in addition to the fact that “it is only sold to security forces and intelligence agencies.”
For this reason, and after criticizing that the victims of espionage have not received any type of information, the three groups consider it necessary to clarify “the alleged misuse of public institutions and resources for political persecution and, specifically, the interference with privacy and privacy of political leaders, institutions and individuals.
They consider in their request that for the Investigation Commission to be effective, it is essential to put all the documentation and necessary means at its disposal, in order to clarify these facts.
