Cultural Omnium has already submitted the first of the lawsuits for the espionage case ‘Catalangate‘. It has done so before the Court of Instruction number 32 of Barcelona, which has already investigate espionage with Pegasus to the counselor and former president of Parliament Roger Torrent as well as the leader of the ERC in Barcelona, Ernest Maragall.
With this complaint on behalf of the former vice president of the organization and spokesman Marcel Maurifrom the person in charge of the international area Elena Jimenez and of Txell Bonet, journalist and colleague Jordi Cuixart, The entity intends to demonstrate the illegal involvement of the Spanish State in the espionage plot and open the door to an investigation that allows all the bodies and powers of the State involved to be charged.
“The ‘Catalangate’, the illegal espionage and the violation of fundamental rights that it entails are one more example of the dirty state war against independence and dissidence”, assured the president of Òmnium, Xavier Antich. “We see again that the State has no limit when it comes to stopping the struggle for self-determination,” he added. According to the president, “attacking Òmnium means attacking civil society” and he considers that the acceptance of these practices by the justice system may represent a precedent for the whole of European society.
Violation of rights
The lawsuit, which is nominally directed against the Israeli company NSO Group, which owns and is responsible for the telephone cyber-espionage software called pegasushighlight pose massive and serious violation of fundamental rightssuch as the right to secrecy of communications and privacy, and which also has the effect of indirectly violating other rights such as thefreedom of expression or the right to defense, that are a consequence of the circumstances in which the attack took place, perpetrated by alleged illegal practices of the Spanish State. Lawyer Benet Salellas states: “We know that there are Spanish government agencies that have acquired and used this cyber espionage program and we are here to accuse these powers of the State.”
It is for this reason that the main object of the complaint focuses on three fundamental aspects, which are translated into concrete actions. These go through: facilitating and investigating all the documentation related to ‘Catalangate, so that they are known to all public opinion; a European Investigation order to clarify the origin of the financing and determine the criminal responsibilities of the purchase and illegal use of Pegasus and the establishment of control mechanisms so that citizens can know if their communications have been intervened taking into account the jurisprudence of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), already applied in Bulgaria, Hungary or Russia, some mechanisms that Spanish legislation does not provide clearly.
Test the responsibilities of the State
One of the main elements of the criminal complaint filed by Òmnium is to submit a European Investigation Order (OEI) to the Luxembourg authorities to investigate the financing to find out who has paid and how much has it cost illegal purchase and use of Pegasus. Specifically, it is requested that the movements made in the bank accounts of NSO Group in the period 2016-2022 be extracted and possible Spanish payers be identified.
As stated by the business manager of NSO Group, Shalev Hulio, in his statement within the framework of the legal procedure initiated by the company WhatsApp in a California court, hiring Pegasus spyware is exclusive to government agencies and its marketing requires compliance with conditions such as the development within the legality and the restriction of its use for the persecution of terrorism. Thus, the contract for the use of Pegasus would require a prior control file by NSO Group to determine that the ‘software’ will not be used outside the law or to commit human rights violations. According to the evidence provided in the complaint, this evaluation either did not exist or was done fraudulently, sufficient evidence for the company to be investigated.
At the same time, the complaint calls for the practice of investigative proceedings in order to demonstrate the level of responsibility of the Spanish government agencies, both those dependent on the Ministry of Defense and those of the Ministry of the Interior, and any other natural or legal person co-responsible. Therefore, based on the lawsuit against NSO Group, Òmnium aims to get new and several imputations that also affect a body of the powers of the State to accuse those organizations that have been responsible for or collaborators in espionage.
Jordi Cuixart as a target
Òmnium Cultural also denounces that “there is no doubt” that the specific dates and the people who have been illegally spied on show that there has been a organized planning, with Jordi Cuixart and his defense strategy as the objective.
The evidence provided shows that the activity of the entity and the people who are part of it were spied on in key moments as the previous week at the entrance of the Civil Guard at the headquarters of the entity, March 2018; the day before the Supreme Court trial, in February 2019; during the judicial process in the Supreme Courtor days before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention urged Spain to release political prisoners, in April 2019, among others.
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These are some of the examples of the follow-up received by the former vice president and then acting president, Marcel Mauri. With the espionage of the jurist Elena Jiménez, international representative of the organization, the State had access to all the details of the defense strategy of Òmnium and violated Cuixart’s right to defense. The journalist Txell Bonet, partner of Jordi Cuixart, was also successfully infected with the spy software during the period April-June 2019, coinciding with the completion of the trial against Catalan politicians. During the month of the infection, Cuixart was preparing his last arguments for the trial, taking advantage of this occasion to accuse the Spanish authorities of not respecting human rights and political repression, considerations that were shared with Bonet.
“Pegasus has been used to investigate Cuixart’s environment with the sole objective of knowing what he thinks, what he says and what he proposes. And this in the context of preparing a trial in which the spy is at the same time the prosecution in the process. , means blowing up the right to defense and the right to a fair trial”, concluded Salellas.