The former director of the CNI, Paz Esteban, testified yesterday before the Barcelona judge investigating the espionage of Pere Aragonès. For an hour, the former head of the intelligence services had to explain the monitoring of the then vice president of the Government under the argument that there were suspicions that he was in charge of directing the Defense Committees of the Republic in secret, as the records maintain. of the Supreme Court that were declassified by the Government and that protected the actions of the CNI.
Esteban's appearance was marked by tension between the State Attorney's Office and the president's lawyer, Andreu Van den Eynde. In fact, the lawyer was warned that if he made statements to the press revealing the content of Esteban's statement he could be accused of a crime of revealing secrets.
Thus, the interrogation of the former director of the intelligence services was carried out within the framework of absolute secrecy. Esteban appeared by videoconference from a Madrid court as an investigator, so she had no obligation to tell the truth. This statement was one of the requests that Aragonès made to the judge in the complaint that he presented and which was accepted.
The intrusion into the then vice president's mobile phone took place between July 2019 and March 2020, although an expert report extended the period in which he could have been infected and placed the start of the attack in July 2018. In addition, Aragonès also claimed the declassification of secret documents, a request that was included in the negotiations between ERC and the PSOE, and which ended on Thursday with a partial lifting of the Supreme Court's orders.
Once Esteban's statement has been heard, the judge must determine whether to continue with the investigation or file it. The case of espionage against Aragonès is the case that has gone the furthest with the declassification of the records of all those being investigated in the courts of Barcelona. In total, there are a dozen cases spread by different courts that investigate at different rates and with different interests the espionage of senior officials and deputies of ERC, Junts, the CUP and Òmnium and the ANC.
