Key step in Catalangate: three executives of the company that owns Pegasus are charged

BarcelonaThe Barcelona Court has ordered the investigation into the Pegasus case to be extended and three executives of NSO Group, the Israeli company that owns the spy software, and its subsidiaries in Luxembourg to be charged. This is the first time that executives of the company will have to answer to justice, according to the Irídia entity. It was precisely this human rights centre that He named the head of NSO Group by extending the complaint for espionage to one of the key lawyers in the judicialisation of the Process, Andreu Van den Eynde, who represents several ERC defendants.

The court now considers that "it is absolutely appropriate to take statements as suspects" from Shalev Hulio, Omri Lavie and Yuval Somekh, who held positions of responsibility in the company that owns Pegasus and two European subsidiaries - OSY Technologies and Q Cyber ​​​​Technologies - during the years of the events under investigation, 02. must investigate them as alleged perpetrators of the crimes of discovery and disclosure of secrets, something that for Irídia represents "a key precedent for the fight against espionage in Spain".

The triple charge had been initially rejected by the 24th Court of Instruction in Barcelona, ​​​​and only the investigation into the Israeli manufacturing company and its European distributors of the software that is only available to the states was maintained, but the Provincial Court concludes that "it seems that the totality of logic is behind the decisions taken." At first, the judge of the case ruled it out, hiding behind the commercial companies without the names and surnames behind them, but the Court found that it is "incongruous" to exclude the people mentioned from the company, taking into account that they are known and that the business companies are indeed investigated for this case. Therefore, it has ordered the court of instruction that, if the case is kept alive, it must charge these three individuals identified as part of the network to bring the software into the European continent. From there, the Catalan entity in favor of human rights urges the authorities of Luxembourg to actively collaborate in the investigation and to promote a European investigation order to clarify the reported facts.

The news in the case comes after the Barcelona Court also ordered a few weeks ago to investigate the former director of the CNI Paz Esteban for spying with Pegasus on former ERC MEP Jordi Solé. An indictment that adds to those already in the case of former president of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès and ERC officials Josep Maria Jové and Diana Riba.

Espionage

Espionage against pro-independence leaders even reached lawyers such as Van den Eynde while he was leading the defense of pro-independence leaders who were being prosecuted. But his case and that of Solé, who are the subject of the investigation in court 24 that has led to the indictments of members of the Israeli malware company, are not the only ones. In fact, Citizenlab revealed that some sixty pro-independence figures were spied on with Pegasus and the CNI admitted eighteen cases during Paz Esteban's tenure – from the former president of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès until the head of the office of former president Carles Puigdemont, Josep Lluís Alay, as well as leaders of pro-independence organisations such as the ANC and Òmnium and several representatives of Junts, ERC and CUP. In fact, several legal proceedings have been opened. The Mossos even certified that Aragonès's phone was spied on with Pegasus and also Alay's.

On the other hand, this Monday Van den Eynde has participated in a parliamentary hearing of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on spy software, as a representative of Irídia.