Indicates that national security could be compromised due to the possible existence of “sensitive information”
MADRID, 5 (EUROPE PRESS)
The judge of the National Court José Luis Calama has decreed the secrecy for a month of the open case for the alleged espionage of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, through their mobile phones with Pegasus, and has offered both to appear as injured, in line with what was requested by the Prosecutor’s Office.
In an order issued this Thursday, the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 4 explains that the declaration of secrecy is intended to “prevent a situation that could seriously compromise the result of the investigation.”
“Only in this way can it be prevented that knowledge of the results of the proceedings to be agreed may give rise to interference or manipulation aimed at hindering the investigation and frustrating its objectives, bearing in mind the possible existence of sensitive information that may be legally classified, seriously compromising the State security or harm the legitimate interests of people outside the procedure”, he explains.
At the same time, the instructor has issued an order where he makes an offer of shares to Sánchez and Robles so that, if they consider it so, they appear as injured parties.
However, given the secret nature that the case now acquires, only the judge and the prosecutor will have knowledge of what is investigated during this period of procedural secrecy.
In any case, Calama recalls that the result of the proceedings carried out during this month may be known later, “thus avoiding any loss of the right of defence, since once the effectiveness of this pursued measure has been achieved, lifting the secret will allow the parties the exercise of defense without restriction of any kind”.
POSSIBLE CRIMES OF DISCLOSURE OF SECRETS
The magistrate opened preliminary proceedings last Tuesday, pointing to possible crimes of discovery and disclosure of secrets, after seeing “clearly” that the jurisdiction to investigate it belongs to the National High Court, since this judicial headquarters has attributed knowledge of the crimes committed against “senior organizations of the nation”, such as the President of the Government and the Minister of Defence.
In that resolution, it provided details on the complaint filed on Monday by the State Attorney’s Office, according to which, after the analysis of the mobile devices of the President of the Government and the Minister of Defense carried out by the CERT on April 30, “there was has 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 highlight 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 “exfiltration of information occurred”, but currently neither of the two phones present “known indicators of ongoing Pegasus infection”.
IN THE CRISIS WITH MOROCCO
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, which precisely led Sánchez to visit the autonomous city on this second day, as well as Melilla , with the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
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 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.
