More than 200 Spanish mobile numbers have been selected as possible targets for monitoring by an NSO Group client believed to be Morocco, according to a leak at the heart of the Pegasus project.
Details of the scale of the apparent target came when Spain’s top criminal court launched an investigation into how the mobile phones of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles were infected with Pegasus spyware last year.
The Spanish government has refused to speculate on who may be behind the “illegal” and “external” attacks, whose existence was revealed on Monday at a hastily convened press conference.
The attack on the prime minister is said to have taken place in May and June last year, a particularly turbulent time in Spanish politics. Not only was the Sanchez administration preparing its controversial and deeply divisive pardons for nine Catalan leaders for independence, imprisoned because of their units in the failed 2017 secession attempt, Spain was also embroiled in a tense diplomatic dispute with Morocco.
The selection of mobile numbers, which is believed to have been made by Morocco, was made in 2019, according to the time stamps in the data, which include more than 50,000 numbers of persons selected as possible targets for monitoring by NSO clients. worldwide.
A Spanish mobile number belonging to Aminatu Haidar, a prominent human rights activist in Morocco, was included in an leaked database and was found to have been targeted by Pegasus in 2018, according to an analysis by Amnesty International. Traces of Pegasus spyware, sold by the Israeli company NSO Group, were also found on a second Haidar phone recently in November 2021.
The Spanish mobile number of journalist Ignacio Chamberlain, whose work focuses on the Maghreb, was also listed in the Pegasus project database.
The inclusion of more than 200 Spanish mobile numbers selected by a customer considered to be Morocco does not mean that every number has been targeted or hacked. But this signals that the client has apparently been active in seeking possible monitoring targets in Spain.
The NSO stated that the fact that a number appeared in the expired list did not in any way indicate whether the number had been targeted for monitoring by Pegasus. The NSO also said the database was “irrelevant” to the company.
Morocco has previously denied spying on foreign leaders using Pegasus, saying reporters investigating the NSO are “incapable of proving [the country had] all kinds of relations ”with NSO.
But an analysis of the leaked records showed that Morocco appears to have identified dozens of French officials as candidates for possible surveillance, including President Emmanuel Macron.
The NSO said spyware is only sold to government clients for the purpose of investigating serious crime and terrorism. He said he was investigating legitimate allegations of abuse and flatly denied that Pegasus had been used for Macron’s purposes.
The attacks came to light as the Spanish government continued to question how Pegasus was used to monitor dozens of members of the Catalan independence movement, including the president of the northeastern Spanish region, Pere Aragones, and three of his predecessors.
The Catalan regional government, which supports independence, pointed to the Spanish National Intelligence Center (CNI), which insists its operations are monitored by the Supreme Court and acts “in full compliance with the legal system and in full compliance with applicable laws”.
On Tuesday, a judge at Spain’s Audiencia Nacional announced the launch of an investigation into a “possible crime of uncovering and revealing secrets” related to the use of Pegasus to infect Sanchez and Robles’ devices.
Recent media reports show that the phone of a third politician – then-Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya – was also targeted by some spyware in May last year.
The dispute between Spain and Morocco arose after the Madrid government allowed Brahim Gali, the leader of the independence of Western Sahara, to be treated by Covid-19 in Spain.
In the days that followed, as more than 8,000 people moved from Morocco to the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta, Rabat’s ambassador to Madrid seemed to draw the line between Gali’s attitude and the influx of migrants, warning that some actions had consequences ”.
At a weekly press conference in Madrid on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Spanish government declined to comment on whether Morocco could be behind the Pegasus attack and what effect such an effect could have on diplomatic relations.
“It’s a bit hypothetical to talk about what the consequences might be – if we can figure out where the attack came from,” said Isabel Rodriguez.
“But what we are aware of is that this attack was external and illegal. These are the security we can use to make decisions right now. “
The government ruled out any internal espionage, adding that the target must have come from abroad, as any such observation in Spain would require judicial authorization.
Rodriguez said the government had nothing to hide and promised full co-operation with any judicial investigation, “including declassifying relevant documents if necessary”.
On Tuesday, Sanchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) joined the three parties on the Spanish right, vetoing a parliamentary inquiry into the Pegasus scandal.
A PSOE spokesman said the congressional committee under discussion was not needed as an internal investigation by Spain’s national intelligence center was already under way, as was an investigation by the public ombudsman.
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The decision did not go well with the PSOE’s younger coalition partners in the far-left alliance Unidas Podemos against austerity, nor with the pro-independent Catalan Republican Left Party (ERC), whose support the minority government relies on in parliament.
ERC spokesman Gabriel Rufian described the use of Pegasus as a “big scandal” and said it needed to be investigated.
The Pegasus project is an investigative collaboration involving 16 media partners, including the Guardian, The Wire, Washington Post and Le Monde, and is coordinated by the French non-profit organization Forbidden Stories.
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