Catalan separatists on Monday accused Spain of spying on dozens of its leaders’ cellular telephones with Pegasus spyware after info came to mild in a report via a Canadian company.
At least 65 Catalan separatists had been targeted such as the place’s modern-day leader, in step with the document by Citizen Lab studies center at the University of Toronto stated by using The New Yorker and Spanish daily El Pais.
The record said Pegasus adware evolved by Israel’s NSO Group was mounted on their phones.
Nearly all of the telephones had been allegedly hacked between 2017 and 2020. The kind of espionage Madrid is accused of is illegal in Spain.
“We have been spied on in a huge and illegal manner through software that only states can possess,” ex-Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont tweeted.
“Politicians, lawyers, and activists are all victims of the Spanish state’s dirty war,” he added.
Those targeted include present Catalan leader Pere Aragones, who was deputy leader of the region at the time, ex-regional leaders Quim Torra and Artur Mas as well as members of the EU and Catalan parliaments and of independent civil society organizations.
Puigdemont, who escaped to Belgium after an attempt by the region to gain independence through a 2017 referendum, was not one of those targeted but several people close to him were, including his wife, Citizen Lab said.
The Spanish government did not respond to requests for comment.
The president of the Catalan regional parliament, Roger Torrent, in July 2020 accused Spain of spying on him with Pegasus software but Madrid denied the claim.
“The Spanish government must give immediate explanations and get to the bottom of the matter,” Aragones tweeted in English on Monday.
Catalonia in northeast Spain has been in the middle for numerous years of a political disaster between separatists, who manipulate the executive and the nearby parliament, and the valuable authorities in Madrid.
Tensions have eased following the beginning of talks in 2020 between separatists and the Socialist authorities under Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez after he pardoned nine jailed separatist leaders.
Pegasus, which can switch on a smartphone’s digital camera or microphone and harvest its statistics, become at the center of a hurricane closing year after a list of approximately 50,000 capability surveillance objectives worldwide became leaked to the media.
