The president of the ERC parliamentary group Josep Maria Jové has assured before the judge that he was spied on through the Pegasus software from at least March 2019 to June 2020 when he was negotiating on behalf of his party the investiture of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, the alarm states due to Covid or budgets. The deputy has appeared this Friday together with the Republican MEP, Diana Riba, before the examining court 20 of Barcelona that he tries to clarify who spied on them and if the surveillance was subject to legality. Riba, for her part, has indicated that her mobile was infected at least on October 28, 2019, two weeks after the sentence of the process that affected her husband, the former Minister Raül Romeva and while she was speaking with her European adviser.
Both have demanded that the Government declassify confidential documents to determine who ordered the tracking of the independentistas’ mobile phones. At the gates of the City of Justice, Riba has urged President Pedro Sánchez to “accelerate and make all the tools available to clarify what has happened with the espionage case.” He also recalled that thanks to his appeal, the Barcelona Court ordered the CNI director, Esperanza Casteleiro, and the company OSY Technologies, from the NSO group, software marketer, to take a statement. “The decision is now on the table by the Council of Ministers and we hope that this government of Pedro Sánchez keeps its word and declassifies these documents,” Riba said. The judge is waiting for the confidential documentation to be released to the public because if they were to remain secret, the director of the CNI would not be able to rule on that information.
In total there were 65 spied on independentistas, as revealed by Citizen Lab and at least 18 were spied on at the request of the CNI under judicial protection. The judge demanded the declassification of secret documents and the appearance as a witness of the director of the CNI and sent a request to the Council of Ministers to obtain the release of the secret documents. She also ordered the prosecution of the company OSY Tecnologies to clarify whether it provided the software to Spanish intelligence.
