The Belgian courts have admitted a criminal complaint filed by Plataforma per la Llengua against Spain for allegedly spying on different mobile phones belonging to members of the executive of the entity dedicated to the promotion and protection of Catalan, infecting them with cyber-espionage software such as Pegasus or one of their versions, as reported by the NGO itself in a statement.
The organization was able to confirm – it assures -, thanks to an expert opinion, that several phones of members of the executive (all those that were analyzed) had been infected, and decided to take the case to the Belgian courts, since some had been spied on at that time. country and because Belgian justice could be a new way to investigate this alleged political attack.
The entity celebrates that the Belgian justice has admitted the complaint for processing and hopes that the investigation will serve to force the Spanish State to identify those responsible for the espionage and to clarify if it has skipped the legal procedures to intervene telephones in other states of the Union European.
Plataforma per la Llengua also recalls that the expert opinion presented with the complaint “was able to detect that the phone responsible for the infection is Spanish” and that the type of cyber-espionage software detected can only be purchased by states.
For Plataforma per la Llengua, the alleged espionage of the Catalan NGO supposes “the violation of the individual rights of people who voluntarily get involved to defend Catalan, and confirms that the language continues to be one of the main workhorses of the Spanish state”.
“Now we know that not only do we have two states against Catalan, but at least one of them is also against the Catalan NGO,” said Ã’scar Escuder, president of Platform for Language, during the conference conference at the College of Journalists in which the case was explained. In addition to Escuder, the press conference included the interventions of Rut Carandell, director of the entity, and Josep Jover, a lawyer specializing in European Union law, who has coordinated the judicial strategy with the Belgian lawyer Catherine Forget.
Plataforma per la Llengua commissioned the computerized expertise of several cell phones of members of the NGO in the summer of 2022, after suspecting that it could have been spied on. The experts’ report, which ended in autumn, confirmed that all the devices analyzed had been infected and, in the cases in which the mobile operating system allowed it, the Spanish mobile responsible for the attacks was identified.
The cyber-espionage software used, whether it was Pegasus or one of its versions, allowed the attackers to access data and personal documentation of the spies, and communication channels such as emails or instant messaging, says the entity, which decided to take the case to the Belgian justice instead of the Spanish one, “with the will to get an independent investigation”.
With the admission for processing of the complaint, the investigating court of the French-speaking court of first instance in Brussels has already begun to investigate the procedures that have been followed to intervene the mobile phones of the members of the entity and to identify those responsible. The investigation, which is being carried out by the Belgian judicial police, will ask the Spanish police and judicial authorities to identify those responsible for the mobile phone that infected the phones, according to expert opinions.
In addition, the court has been asked to address the competent European body, Eurojust, to verify if Spain processed the necessary requests to listen to the telephones in Belgian territory. According to European regulations, if a state wants to legally tap a telephone, it must do so through a request to Eurojust, which is based in The Hague, in the Netherlands, by means of a specific letter.
Platform for Language denounces the Spanish State for having committed six crimes under Belgian law: interference in the computer system of mobile phones, arbitrary interference with the fundamental freedoms of those being spied on, interception of mobile phone messages and rape of computer data, the secrecy of communications and the secrecy of electronic communications, in particular.
