The judge of 'Pegasus' opens the case and admits the appearance of Prolege as a popular accusation

MADRID, 17 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The judge of the National Court in charge of investigating the alleged 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 admitted the appearance of the Association of European Jurists Prolege as popular accusation.

In an order this Friday, to which Europa Press has had access, the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 4, José Luis Calama, agrees to the association's request after paying 10,000 euros as bail and with the in order to avoid the abuse or fraudulent use of the procedural figure of the accusation.

Prolege thus becomes the first popular accusation in this case. The magistrate rejected last May on two occasions to admit the appearance of the Generalitat of Catalonia under the same figure due to lack of legitimacy. And he did it, as he explained, while there is no specific legislative authorization for public legal entities, as is the case of the Generalitat, to exercise the accusation.

The Prosecutor's Office, for its part, did not oppose admitting the appearance if Prolege met two criteria: the filing of a complaint and the payment of the aforementioned amount. However, the magistrate, after analyzing the doctrine of the Supreme Court, concludes that the first extreme is not necessary.

"Although the formulation of a complaint should not constitute a special difficulty for those who have to act in the process with the assistance of a lawyer, following the expressed broad interpretation, the requirement in question must be understood as not necessary given that the actions, if well in a very embryonic state, they are already in process", justifies the judge.

Regarding the bail, the magistrate understands that the setting of the amount of 10,000 euros "is affordable, moderate, and adjusted to the nature and relevance of the facts investigated in these proceedings." Especially, he points out, as he seeks to avoid "unfounded accusations" or the use of popular accusation "for spurious purposes."

Calama began to investigate 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 the President of the Government and the Minister of Defense, a complaint that was expanded later after also confirming the intrusion into Grande-Marlaska's phone.

In that first resolution, the instructor provided details on the initial complaint filed by the State Attorney's Office, 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 known 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, Calama collected, the reports stated that "information exfiltration 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 accused 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.