A judge in Barcelona has summoned the former director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) Paz Esteban to testify as being investigated for spying on the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, using the Pegasus software. It is the first charge of Spanish intelligence investigated for political espionage on pro-independence leaders. In an interlocutory hearing, the head of the court of inquiry 29 of Barcelona accepts the complaint that the president presented in February 2022.
Esteban is summoned to appear next December 13, the day on which Aragonès will also have to declare himself injured. The president’s cell phone, according to information published by Citizen Lab, – a laboratory at the University of Toronto – was infected by means of SMS sent on January 4, 5 and 13, 2020, when he was vice-president of the Torra government.
The judge endorses the battery of proceedings requested by the president’s lawyer, Andreu Van den Eynde. On the one hand, it requests information from the company that owns or is linked to Pegasus, and on the other, it requests from the CNI, with a prior declassification, information about its purchases and activities with the aim of clarifying whether being the Spanish intelligence that ordered the espionage of Aragonés. “It is agreed to request the CNI to detail which specific people acted on behalf of the CNI in the processes of ordering, purchasing, receiving, requesting information or technical support” and to inform “if they have used the Pegasus software in relation to Mr. Pere Aragonès”, the judge underlines.
Esteban, the first woman to head the intelligence center (2019), was dismissed in May last year as a result of the open political crisis between the PSOE and ERC over the Pegasus case. In the commission of official secrets, he admitted to having spied on 18 of the 65 pro-independence people who were part of a list drawn up by CitizenLab, but clarified that he had judicial authorization. For this reason, the judge agrees to deliver an exhortation to the magistrate of the Supreme Court responsible for the judicial control of the CNI to certify whether he has authorized the use of remote control software, monitoring, signaling or any form of intervention in Aragonès’ communications . If so, the Barcelona judge requests the Supreme Court to send him the judicial resolutions by which this “interference” has been authorized.
At first, the judge restrained himself in favor of the National Court at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, since he considered that the president was a high institution of the State, a decision that was revoked by the Barcelona Court . With the acceptance of Aragonès’ complaint, several courts have opened an investigation into the political espionage of pro-independence leaders with the Pegasus software. The only thing that is progressing so far is the one that aims to clarify who gave the order to investigate the leaders of ERC, Josep Maria Jové and Diana Riba and whether they did it with a judicial guarantee. The president of the Generalitat called the acceptance of the complaint an “important step to clarify the whole truth”. “We want to know who ordered to spy on independence”, he said on the X social network. “The violation of fundamental and political rights cannot go unpunished”, he added.
