Margarita Robles has once again rejected that the data stolen from the President of the Government’s mobile phone through the Pegasus program included “information legally classified as secret or reserved”, which is why she has denied that the exfiltration of documents has in any way compromised national security.
This is what the Minister of Defense has done in her appearance before the joint National Security commission that is being held in Congress after the National Court has reopened the case in which it investigated the infection with the espionage program, which also infected the mobile devices of the Ministers of the Interior and Agriculture and Fisheries, Fernando Grande-Marlaska and Luis Planas, respectively.
“There is no known evidence that the devices contained classified information and there is no verified information, relevant technical data or accredited fact that links the infections referred to with an alleged breach of national security,” he has reiterated up to three times before, including, to submit to questions from the different parliamentary groups.
And despite the insinuations that Vox has made about the possible authorship of the espionage could come from Morocco, Robles has assured that the Government is “the first interested in knowing who is behind the infection.” And he has guaranteed that “he will continue to collaborate [with Justice] to reach knowledge, duly proven” of the authorship. “Because in this case there is no room for speculation,” he has admonished the ultra group.
EH Bildu, for its part, has stopped guessing to focus on proven evidence. And that is where his spokesperson Jon Iñarritu has demanded that light be shed: “Despite not being classified information, do you know what documentation was stolen?; What specific issues does it concern? At what level do you place the conversations between President Sánchez and his ministers or between President Sánchez and his counterparts? accumulated on the list of questions unanswered by the Government.
What was affected, according to the head of Defense, was the privacy and personal data of the owners of the ‘hacked’ terminals. Specifically, something more than three gigabytes of data that, for the popular spokesperson on the commission, Rafael Hernando, is too large to correspond only to private information. “The President of the Government has an intimate and personal life of great capacity,” he said to try to ridicule the report prepared by the CNI and presented by Minister Robles.
An argument quickly dismantled by the socialist deputy Javier Rodríguez Palacios who, addressing Hernando, pointed out: “On my mobile I have 140 gigabytes and I don’t have a very relevant intimate life, I assure you. Mostly they are photos of my son… Update yourself, we are not in 83 when you started in politics,” he noted sarcastically. “If you want, we’ll have a coffee tomorrow and show each other our cell phones,” he asked the popular deputy.
On the part of the PNV, and despite the fact that Robles has insisted that “there is no data that links the information extracted with an alleged bankruptcy of national security”, his deputy Mikel Legarda has demanded less complacency from the minister by reminding her that “the “The fact that there have been no outcome conditions does not imply that there have been no risk conditions.” And in that sense he has stressed that the fact that among the spied ministers were, precisely, those who hold the portfolios that concern defense, security and foreign affairs invites us to be suspicious of the aforementioned risk conditions due to the consequences that could still arise. in the time.
On the other hand, ERC will put to vote in the session of the Defense Commission on Tuesday an initiative in which it asks to promote political and judicial control of the CNI. Specifically, the acting president of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, and 17 other independence leaders suffered espionage with Pegasus, and the case is currently in the hands of Justice.
The Catalan independence party has repeatedly criticized the Government’s way of proceeding regarding the case, reproaching the Executive that “it has not met expectations” regarding the declassification of the documents related to it.
Since December, Congress has approved an investigation commission into the use of the Pegasus program to spy on politicians, which was demanded by ERC as a condition to support the election of Francina Armengol as president of Congress and thus protect the progressive majority in the Table of the Camera.
But months after it was established in February, the commission has not yet started due to lack of agreement between the PSOE and its allies on those appearing who should be called to testify, since the independentists point to the coalition government and CNI officials. .
