Although it remains to be seen what becomes of all this, France has opened up a line of investigation into the so-called Pegasus case involving the espionage with this Israeli software on a number of mobile phones. Specifically, those of the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, defence minister Margarita Robles, and former foreign minister, Arancha González Laya. We are talking about a case that made a huge impact during the spring of 2022 and that originated with the complaint by 67 Catalan independentists who announced that they had been spied on, after an investigation by the Citizen Lab centre at the University of Toronto had detailed how and when their phones were infected, as well as suggesting the responsibility of Spain's National Intelligence Centre (CNI) for the espionage. The case escalated from the independence movement to the Spanish government and this caused a major crisis, since it revealed a security breach in the midst of talks on the pardons for the pro-independence leaders and Spain's negotiations with Morocco.
Although a case was opened in the National Audience criminal court, the judge in charge of the investigation shelved it due to Israel's lack of legal cooperation, as was explained. In fact, that decision greatly calmed down the Spanish executive, since it was a huge hot potato to keep a case like this open, with as many possible side-effects as lines of inquiry that could have been followed. Now, the National Audience judge José Luis Calama has reopened the investigation into the alleged spying on the mobile phones of Sánchez, Robles and González Laya after receiving new information from France about a case carried out in that country. The French judges persisted in their own investigation and have now sent the Spanish court a European Investigation Order that incorporates a case started in 2021 over multiple Pegasus infections in the phones of a range of professionals including journalists, lawyers, public figures, as well as members of the French government, ministers and deputies.
According to the judge, if this case is compared with the analyses made by Spain's National Cryptological Centre of the infected devices of the Spanish PM and his ministers - and here is the key - it may be possible to advance in the investigations of both countries to determine their authorship. Comparisons will need to be made between the clues found on the different infected phones, but there is a way to do this. Surely, people in the Spanish government must have looked aghast at this: it is not a subject that anyone wants to stir up, since 2.6 gigabytes of data were extracted from Sánchez's phone, and although at the time the incident was relativised by the Spanish executive, there was a lot of speculation. Among other things, because the specter of Morocco and its secret services has always hovered over it without ever being proven.
Surely, people in the Spanish government must have looked aghast at this: no-one wants to stir it up, since 2.6 gigabytes of data were extracted from Sánchez's phone
All this also coincided with the issue of the sovereignty of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara and the drastic change in Spain's historical position, which had favoured the Sahrawi people, but now left them at the mercy of Morocco. The fact that relations between France and Morocco are not going through their best period either, basically because of Macron's rapprochement towards Algeria, add some greater complexity to the placement of the information received at the National Audience. Judge Calama's resolution leaves no doubt about the intention to move forward with the investigations in both countries to clarify the authorship of these mobile phone infections. The storm that is raging between the Spanish judiciary and the government could even be one further element that will stop this case because thrown into some bottom drawer.