This Wednesday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) asked Spain for more transparency regarding the use of the Pegasus spy device with figures from the Catalan independence movement.
In a resolution and a recommendation approved this Wednesday by a very large majority (91 votes in favor and 16 against the first, 94 in favor and 9 against the second), the PACE asks the member countries that have used Pegasus – and there is evidence that there are at least five of them, including Spain – that the national authorities and the courts offer clarifications.
Above all, it is possible to determine whether, by accessing the mobile phones of political figures, journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders through this spy program, this intrusion into their privacy was done with a legitimate objective, such as national security or crime prevention.
In the case of Spain, the rapporteur of the report, the Dutch parliamentarian Pieter Omtzigt, has insisted that the judicial authorizations received by the National Intelligence Center (CNI) to monitor Catalan independence movement leaders with Pegasus should be made public and should be launching a parliamentary commission of inquiry.
“If things have been done correctly, there is no need to be afraid,” Omtzigt stressed at the end of a debate in which the clash between the parliamentarians of the right and the Spanish extreme right, on the one hand, and the senator from Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), Laura Castel, on the other.
Between the two, the socialist representative for Zaragoza Susana Sumelzo has defended the actions of Pedro Sánchez’s Government on this issue, which she said has been committed to “democratic regeneration” and to the reinforcement of the secret services. .
Above all, Sumelzo has assured that the information extracted from the 18 people on whom the CNI has admitted to having spied (of the 65 pro-independence personalities whose phones were tapped, according to Citizen Lab, was only used for the purposes intended). authorized the Supreme Court magistrate who gave approval to the operation. “Their fundamental rights – Sumelzo has reiterated – have always been protected by a Supreme Court magistrate,” he insisted.
Furthermore, he recalled that the agreements with the independentistas after the July legislative elections for the leadership bodies of the Congress of Deputies include the organization of a parliamentary investigation commission on this issue.
Castel has emphasized the blockade of this commission by the right and has complained that the people spied on cannot know what was extracted from their cell phones nor have they been able to consult the judicial authorization that allowed the CNI to resort to Pegasus for what he described as “an unprecedented attack against a democratic movement.”
“This resolution is very important because it places Spain at the same level as Hungary, Poland and Azerbaijan,” Castel said after its approval.
The Spanish Popular Party (PP) has clearly taken a position against the report, and through its deputy Pablo Hispán has charged against the speaker, who in his opinion “behaves like a judge, prosecutor and executioner” but without asking the accused, since “no State to which Mr. Omtzigt refers has had the right to defend itself.
Hispán has not been lukewarm with the Catalan independence activists spied on with Pegasus or who claim to have been spied on: “These alleged victims present false positives (…) or do not collaborate with the courts of Justice.”
Along similar lines, Vox deputy José María Sánchez García has disqualified the speaker’s text because in his opinion it is based “on isolated facts” and because in the case of Spain it does not take into account that the people spied on with Pegasus “had a coup d’état” with the “illegal referendum” of 2017 and since then they have continued to say “that they would stage a coup d’état again.” “This espionage that was carried out at that time – he added – was well done” and was also carried out “in accordance with the law” and authorized by a magistrate.
For Omtzigt, the authorities “have not been transparent” and once the chapter on the independence referendum was closed, a parliamentary investigation should be authorized to examine how each other acted and how the State did so.
In the APCE text, Spain is criticized, among other things, for the fact that the judicial procedures opened by the independentists’ complaints “are not progressing as quickly as expected.” Also that a court should be able to verify whether the authorization given to the CNI to spy on the 18 was proportional and necessary.
