The AN files the case on the espionage of Sánchez with Pegasus and detects up to five intrusions on his phone

He criticizes Israel's lack of collaboration and says that the disclosure of secrets "has jeopardized the very security of the State"

The judge of the National Court José Luis Calama has archived the case in which he was investigating the espionage of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and several of his ministers with the Pegasus software due to the "absolute" lack of legal cooperation from Israel, which still has not responded to the letter rogatory sent by the court. The instructor has detected up to five intrusions into Sánchez's mobile.

In the provisional dismissal order, collected by Europa Press, the head of the Central Investigating Court 4 reviews all the proceedings carried out throughout the case, which has been followed by a crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets that, he says, has "put in check the very security of the State".

"Unfortunately, at this procedural moment, more than a year after the issuance of the aforementioned letters rogatory, no response has been received, despite having been subject to extension once, and compliance reiterated on another couple of occasions. This Silence clearly shows an absolute lack of legal cooperation on the part of the Government of Israel, which allows us to presume that the letter rogatory in question, sent four times, will never be completed," criticizes the magistrate.

Thus, the judge makes it clear that "the frustration of the investigation derived from non-compliance with the rogatory letters addressed to the Israeli authorities prevents an investigation into the attribution of authorship to any specific person", leading "inevitably to agree the provisional dismissal of the proceedings due to the lack of a known perpetrator or perpetrators".

The judge explains that, according to the evidence collected throughout the investigation - which began in April of last year - the infection of the Prime Minister's mobile phone occurred five times, between October 2020 and December 2021. .

The first of the processes that have been detected as harmful occurred between May 19 and 21, 2021, and the amount of information "exfiltrated" between the two dates was at least 2.57 GB. It would have occurred in the context of the massive entry of some 10,000 immigrants into Ceuta between May 17 and 18, which precisely led Sánchez to visit the autonomous city on this second day, as well as Melilla with Grande-Marlaska.

The second was detected on May 31 and the "exfiltrated" information was 130 MB. This would have taken place when the President of the Government was meeting the Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, in Alcalá de Henares on the occasion of the XIII Spanish-Polish Summit. That day, Morocco published a statement in which it indicated that the diplomatic crisis was motivated by the government's position on the Sahara, not by the reception of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.

MARGARITA ROBLES: 4 INTRUSION

Regarding the cell phone of the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, the instructor points out that it shows signs of having been infected by Pegasus on four occasions, between May and October 2021, while that of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, confirmed it. It was on two occasions, on June 2 and 7 of the same year.

For his part, the mobile phone of the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, would have been infected on June 25, 2021, although the amount of "exfiltered" information (less than 1 kb) suggests an unsuccessful infection attempt by the existence of one of the "vaccine" applications.

It should be noted that, when the magistrate opened the case, the reports from the National Cryptological Center only warned of two attacks on Sánchez's phone - those carried out between May 19 and 31 - and one on Robles's, perpetrated in June 2021.

THE AUTHORSHIP HAS NOT BEEN DETERMINED

Judge Calama maintains that the analysis carried out on these four devices with the tools and techniques available at the National Cryptological Center and the National Intelligence Center has not allowed the authorship of any of these infections to be determined.

Thus, and in order to determine the identity of the persons who allegedly committed the acts, a request was addressed to Israel with a request for information from the company that owns Pegasus, NSO GROUP, and the request for a statement as a witness of their Executive Director.

In this sense, the magistrate recalls that it has been necessary to extend this request for international legal cooperation on one occasion and that, additionally, two reminders have had to be issued for his response.

Calama understands that although the terms of Article 2 of the European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters provide considerable enforcement discretion to the State to which a request for legal cooperation is made, the exercise of this discretion is subject to the expressed obligation to good faith codified in article 26 of the Vienna Convention of 1969.

This, in his opinion, should oblige the State of Israel to explain the reasons for the refusal to execute the rogatory letter, as well as justify that these have a place within those allowed by the aforementioned conventional stipulation.

TRUSTS THAT THE "DIPLOMATIC PATH" WILL BE PROMOTED

"At this point, this jurisdictional body can do little or nothing to comply with the reference letter rogatory and, therefore, for the present investigation to advance. All that remains is a possible diplomatic channel that is capable of promoting compliance with the obligations derived from international treaties, and whose exercise corresponds to the Government, in this case, also, the victim of the crime under investigation," it indicates.

In his opinion, and "without a doubt, the State Attorney's Office, appearing in these proceedings, as the procedural representative of the General State Administration, will promote the exercise of said path through the mechanisms that the Government has for such purposes. from Spain".

For Calama, the procedural situation described places the procedure in what the Supreme Court describes as "investigative impotence", which prevents knowing the reality of what happened, and which, in this case, means that "the process remains dormant or latent, until the information obtained through a punctual and unlikely fulfillment of the letter rogatory that Israel has obstructed or new sources of evidence, allow the continuation of the procedure".

The instructor considers that the facts investigated can be framed within the crimes of discovery and disclosure of secrets that safeguard personal and family privacy space that is removed from foreign interference, crimes that for the magistrate "have put the security of the State in check." .