The judge in the 'Pegasus case' once again requests Israel's collaboration one year after the start of the investigation

The magistrate extends the pending instruction for authorization to travel to the Hebrew nation

MADRID, 15 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The judge of the National Court that is investigating the espionage of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Ministers of Defense and Interior, Margarita Robles and Fernando Grande-Marlaska, with the Pegasus program through their mobile phones has once again asked Israel to collaborate with the investigation and authorize him to travel to the country.

Legal sources have confirmed to Europa Press that the head of the Central Investigating Court Number 4, José Luis Calama, has agreed to extend the investigation while he has once again addressed the Israeli authorities so that they respond to his letters rogatory when a year of the start of the investigation.

It should be remembered that last year the magistrate asked Israel for permission for a judicial commission headed by him to travel to the Hebrew nation to take a witness statement from the CEO of the company that markets Pegasus. Calama has already addressed a first request to the Israeli authorities for the company to report on different aspects of this computer tool.

Since then, the magistrate has been able to question the former director of the CNI Paz Esteban, the ministers Robles and Marlaska and also his cabinet partner, the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños. However, the judge is still awaiting a response from Israel.

Calama began to investigate in April of last year pointing to possible crimes of discovery and disclosure of secrets, after the complaint filed by the State Attorney for the infection of the mobile phones of the President of the Government and the Minister of Defense, a complaint that was extended later after also confirming the intrusion into Grande-Marlaska's phone.

In that first resolution, the instructor provided details about the initial complaint filed by the State Attorney, according to which, after the analysis of the mobile devices of the chief executive and the head of Defense carried out by the CERT on April 30 , "it has been learned that they were subjected to several infections by the Pegasus tool, spyware for mobile devices, between the months of May and June 2021."

The reports of the National Cryptological Center on the mobiles of Sánchez and Robles highlighted that "the mobile device of the President of the Government analyzed was infected by Pegasus on two occasions (on May 19, 2021 and May 31, 2021)", while that of Robles would have been infected in June of that year.

In both cases, Calama collected, the reports stated that "exfiltration of information occurred", but currently neither of the two phones presents "known indicators of ongoing infection by Pegasus".

The first of the intrusions into Sánchez's mobile phone would have occurred in the context of the massive entry of some 10,000 immigrants into Ceuta between May 17 and 18, 2021, which precisely led Sánchez to visit the autonomous city on the second day, as well as like Melilla, with the Minister of the Interior.

In addition, May 18 was when Morocco called its ambassador in Madrid, Karima Benyaicha, for consultations, the one that had been summoned by Foreign Affairs to protest the events in Ceuta. On the same day 19, Sánchez was in a control session to the Government in the Congress of Deputies.

The second 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.

Precisely, the latter testified on June 1, 2021 as a defendant before Judge Santiago Pedraz in the National Court for the complaint filed by the Saharawi Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ASADEH) for genocide and hours later he flew back to Algeria.

Regarding the mobile phone of the Minister of the Interior, the Government reported after Grande-Marlaska suffered two attacks in the same June 2021. In the first of them, 4 megabytes were stolen and in the second a much larger volume of information , 6.3 gigs.

The analysis of the terminals of other members of the Government was also able to determine an attempted infection of the phone of the head of Agriculture, Luis Planas, which was unsuccessful, and also occurred in June 2021.