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Government responds to the judge investigating espionage with 'Pegasus' that there is nothing secret to declassify

Calama asked the Council of Ministers to lift the secrecy of documents that were affected by the declaration of Robles and Marlaska.

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Government responds to the judge investigating espionage with 'Pegasus' that there is nothing secret to declassify

Calama asked the Council of Ministers to lift the secrecy of documents that were affected by the declaration of Robles and Marlaska

MADRID, 23 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Government has responded to the judge of the National Court José Luis Calama, who is investigating the 'Pegasus case', that "there is nothing secret to declassify" that could affect the statement as witnesses of the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska.

This has been confirmed by Defense sources to Europa Press after it was made public this Tuesday that the Executive has agreed to resolve on the declassification requested in the magistrate's plea of ​​July 28, 2022.

That day, Calama issued a resolution agreeing to the declaration of Grande-Marlaska and Robles, and at the same time ordering a request to be sent to the Council of Ministers to proceed to declassify "the matters, acts, documents, information, data and objects, declared secret or reserved and that could be affected" by such testimonials.

This case investigates the infection of the mobile phones of these two ministers now cited as witnesses, of the Prime Minister himself, Pedro Sánchez, and of the attempt to infect the terminal of the head of Agriculture, Luis Planas, with the Pegasus computer tool.

Calama agreed to summon Robles and Grande-Marlaska as witnesses --they will respond to the judge in writing-- in view of the content of the testimonial statements of the former director of the CNI Paz Esteban, of the official of this organization number 7613 --who signed the reports preliminary annexes to the complaints of the State Attorney-- and the Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños.

It should be remembered that in May the Government authorized the National Intelligence Center (CNI) to collaborate with Calama in the investigation. Already then, government sources consulted by this agency, advanced that, apart from the possible statements, there was no more relevant information for this case that had to be declassified.

Calama opened preliminary proceedings on April 26, 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 members of the Executive.

According to that initial complaint, 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 had been learned that they "were the object of several infections by the Pegasus tool , mobile device spy software, between the months of May and June 2021".

The reports of the National Cryptologic Center on the cell phones 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 Robles would have been infected in June of that year.

In both cases, he picked up Calama in his car, the reports stated that "exfiltration of information occurred", but currently neither of the two phones present "known indicators of ongoing Pegasus infection".

The first of the intrusions in Sánchez's mobile 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 this second day, as well like Melilla, with the Minister of the Interior.

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

The second would have taken place when the President of the Government was with 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 regarding the Sahara, not by the reception of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.

Precisely, the latter declared on June 1, 2021 as a defendant before Judge Santiago Pedraz in the National High 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.

As for 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 gigabytes.

The analysis of the terminals of other members of the Government was also able to determine an attempt to infect the phone of the head of Agriculture, Luis Planas, which was unsuccessful, and also occurred in June of last year.