Pegasus case: judge now asks Torrent and Maragall to hand in their phones
The case at Barcelona's Court no. 32 was the first opened on alleged espionage
BarcelonaFor over a year now, Barcelona's Court no. 32 has been investigating alleged spying on former Catalan speaker – now a Catalan minister – Roger Torrent and ERC spokesman in Barcelona City Council Ernest Maragall using Pegasus spyware. But it is only now that the judge has ordered both politicians to hand in their mobile phones, so they may be analysed. This is one of the first proceedings ordered by the court, which until now had only requested information about Pegasus's developer, Israeli company NSO, through letters rogatory to different countries that are still awaiting a response.
Coinciding with the filing of new lawsuits over alleged espionage, the judge has now decided to order a test that the Prosecutor's Office requested a year and a half ago, as advanced by El País and confirmed to ARA by court sources. At the moment, the magistrate has not yet transferred the new complaints filed by CUP and Òmnium to the Public Prosecutor's Office, so that it may decide whether it is in favour of investigating the alleged spying using the same programme on mobile phones owned by David Fernàndez, Carles Riera, Albert Botran, Marcel Mauri, Txell Bonet and Elena Jiménez.
The head of the 32nd examining court of Barcelona opened the case over a year and a half ago as a result of complaints by Torrent and Maragall. Until now, according to the judicial sources consulted, the case had got stuck
