Pedro Sanchez, and Margarita Robles were targeted last year, along with many other politicians from several countries, by the spyware used by the Jewish state, according to the Spanish government.
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A new government is added to the list of victims of Pegasus. Cellphones of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his Defense Minister Margarita Robles tapped “illegal” and “external” by means of Israeli spyware, affirmed the minister of the Spanish presidency during a press conference convened urgently, Monday, May 2.
“It’s not about guesswork”insisted Felix Bolanoswho did not wish to make “conjecture” on the reasons for this espionage or appoint a person responsible. Facts “of enormous gravity” occurred in May and June 2021. “There is no evidence that there were any other intrusions after these dates,” he continued. Additional scans are performed on the devices of other members of the government.
These revelations come as Spain is in the grip of a crisis between the government and separatist circles in Catalonia, who accuse the Spanish intelligence services of having used the same software to spy on 65 people from the separatist movement. According to a project report Citizen Lab at the Canadian University of Toronto, the laptops were allegedly hacked between 2017 and 2020.
Designed by the Israeli company NSO, the Pegasus software allows, once installed on a laptop, to access messaging, data or to activate the device remotely for the purpose of capturing sound or images. He found himself exposed last year after surveys published by a consortium of 17 international media. According to them, Pegasus has made it possible to spy on the phones of journalists, politicians, activists and business leaders in many countries, including several French politicians. According to the NGO Amnesty International, this software could have been used to hack up to 50,000 laptops worldwide.