Pedro Sánchez fires director of Spain’s secret services for spying on some politicians

The director of the Spanish secret services, Paz Esteban, question after learning of the spying on the Prime Minister’s phonesPedro Sánchez, and many Catalan independentists, was dismissed this Tuesday, the Executive announced.

“The government has now agreed to change the direction of the CNI” (National Intelligence Center), Defense Minister Margarita Robles announced at a press conference after the council of ministers, admitting that “There are shortcomings, there are mistakes“.

In addition, the government announced that the cell phone of Interior Minister Fernando Grande Marlaska, was also detected by the Israeli program Pegasus, as well as those of Sánchez and Robles themselves, after completing the inspection at the terminals of all members of the Executive. .

The “Pegasus Case” -in which the Catalan independence movement, key to the parliamentary stability of the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez, sought leaders – so the first great victim is charged.

The Secretary of State for Defense, Esperanza Casteleiro, will replace Esteban as head of the CNI.

Stephen appeared on Thursday in a parliamentary commission to provide explanations, but they they did not convince the parliamentary allies of the government, the extreme left and the Catalan and Basque separatists.

According to reports from that show, Esteban admitted that 18 pro-independence leaders-including Catalan regional president Pere Aragonés when he was vice president-they were detectedbut with a court order.

Chronicle of a scandal

The scandal first erupted, on April 18, when the Canadian organization Citizen Lab was recognized more than 60 people from Catalan separatist orbit that mobile phones will be infected between 2017 and 2020 by Israeli Pegasus espionage software.

The issue changed when the government announced last week that Pedro Sánchez and his defense minister, Margarita Robles, they were also detected using the same computer program in May and June 2021.

The government ensures the intervention of Sánchez’s telephones and that of the Minister of Defense and the Minister of the Interior is the product of an “external attack”without more, though the Spanish newspaper thinks that Morocco, where Madrid has closed a diplomatic crisis for nearly a year, may be behind.

Pegasus, which allows remote access to data or activation of a phone’s cameras and microphones, and the Israeli company that created it, NSO, have been criticized after a media group revealed last year that this software is used to spy on hundreds of politiciansjournalists, human rights activists and businessmen.

Pedro Sánchez was the first head of government to was announced to have been spied on by Pegasus. To date, no head of state has announced that this software has been detected.

Paz Esteban, 64, became in 2020 the first woman to lead intelligence serviceswhere he started working almost 40 years ago.

With a degree in Philosophy and Letters, a specialist in Ancient and Medieval History, Esteban made his career in the field of foreign intelligence, although he was not known to have experience in the field as an agent.

In his inaugural speech two years ago, he pledged to “spearhead CNI’s digital transformation project,” to better adapt it “to the knowledge society in which we live and to what it implies in technology”.

Intelligence, under a magnifying glass

The CNI is accountable to the government, to parliament – to an official secret commission – and to the judiciary, where You must request permission to tap the phoneoo

Too politically sensitive, this spy scandal has the potential to derail the left government.

Catalan independentists of the ERC have come to demand the resignation of Minister Robles to continue supporting Sánchez, whose term is set to end at the end of 2023.

Some political parties have also questioned the exact moment when the government disclosed the spy it suffered, wondering if in fact the Executive knew of these attacks in advance and decided to make them public only to appease the independent Catalans, thus presenting himself as another victim of Pegasus.

The secret services of the Spaniards, which underwent major reorganizations after the advent of democracy in 1978, had starred in several scandals over the past decades.

In 1995, illegal wiretapping ended up at the expense of two of Robles and Esteban’s predecessors, Julián García Vargas and Emilio Alonso Manglano, respectively, as well as the vice president of the socialist government at the time, Narcís Serra. , their jobs.

Recently, the former director of CNI, Félix Sanz Roldán, was accused by the ex -girlfriend of King Emeritus Juan Carlos I of he was harassed not to reveal secretsthing he denied.

Source: AFP