The court of instruction number 24 of Barcelona has admitted for processing the complaint of the ERC lawyer Andreu Van den Eynde against the Israeli company NSO, owner of the Pegasus spy program, for the Catalangate case, as reported by the party. This is the first lawsuit admitted against the Israeli company in Catalonia.
The judge has agreed to admit the complaint against the NSO group for the "creation and making the Pegasus program available to third parties", as well as for all those "actions and omissions" of the company that could be capable of "voluntarily contributing and aware of infection verification, access and information extraction” of Van den Eynde devices.
The magistrate has also agreed to initiate the practice of preliminary investigations. For this reason, the lawyer, who filed his complaint on May 17, 2022, has been summoned to testify on July 18. "For the first time, a court makes a decision aimed at investigating the facts in an effective way" celebrates Van den Eynde.
The lawyer considers that “the resolution admits that, within the hypotheses of the investigation, it must be clarified what is the role that NSO plays, which, despite being the only developer and marketer of Pegasus, is still kept in the shadows and works opaque form. An opaque conduct, says Van den Eynde "due to the lack of investigative initiatives by the Catalan judicial bodies, until now".
On the other hand, according to the party, the investigating court number 20 of Barcelona, until now aware of the case of the president of the ERC parliamentary group, Josep Maria Jové, and the Republican MEP Diana Riba, has referred the case to the court number 32, at the request of the Republicans, as well as the Public Prosecutor's Office, to combine the cases with those of the Minister of Business and Employment, Roger Torrent, and the deputy and president of the municipal group in the Barcelona City Council, Ernest Maragall.
The judge argues that the requirements of connection between all the causes are met: it specifies that the act that is the object of the crime "is the same" and that "the victims are linked to each other by ideological affinity and by belonging to the same political group." In addition, the judge also insinuates that, although the authors of the case are unknown, "everything points to them being the same people." She argued that, on the contrary, Court 32 is using it so as not to accumulate the cases in the case of the complaints filed by Òmnium and the CUP.
