The Civil Guard has assured before the judge that in the investigation opened to the Defense Committees of the Republic (CDR) only the official Sitel was used as a recording system and they have ruled out the use of other systems. The defenses suspect that the investigators could have had the support of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) and therefore that the Pegasus software was used, known because it has been used to record independence leaders.
The judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón has taken statements from six agents, at the request of the defense of the 13 members of the CDR, specifically from a group called the Tactical Response Team (ERT) prosecuted for allegedly planning a series of sabotages and Violent actions against public buildings in Catalonia that should have been carried out once the sentence was known that convicted several members of the government of Carles Puigdemont in 2019 for sedition for organizing the referendum and the symbolic declaration of independence.
However, these agents have denied that other systems were used other than the official one used by the Police and Civil Guard, in addition to denying that information was received from the secret services during the investigation, according to sources present at the interrogation.
Before the matter goes to trial, the defense wants to know why this investigation was started and when. In his opinion, the defendants lack all the necessary information to face the trial, given that today there is a part of the proceedings that are still secret.
However, the agents have not clarified any data in this regard, among other things because none of them is already in the group in which the investigation began and, therefore, they do not have information on the proceedings.
The suspicions of the defenses lie, among other extremes, in the fact that Elíes Campo, spied on by Pegasus, would have been investigated in the secret part of the proceedings that García Castellón keeps open, in the part that affects the Tsunami Democràtic movement.
The eavesdropping with Pegasus software became known after the publication of a report by the Citizien Lab, a specialized center of the University of Toronto. As a result of knowing this information that collected listening to more than 60 independence leaders, the CNI had to give explanations. Its now former director Paz Esteban acknowledged the wiretapping of 18 of them, all of them authorized by the Supreme Court.
The defenses of the CDR want to know, in addition, if in the open case in the National High Court investigations have been carried out regarding the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, in the part that is secret. However, the agents have not clarified any point in this regard.
CDR members are prosecuted for belonging to a terrorist organization, possession, deposit and manufacture of explosive and flammable substances or devices of a terrorist nature. In his indictment, the magistrate considers that this group formed within the CDRs the so-called Tactical Response Team (ERT), a cell made up of those investigated, made up of a small group of individuals from different CDRs, who "show great radicalism" .
The creation of this cell is motivated, continues the judge, by the need to have, within the structure of the CDR, a clandestine group of highly trusted individuals who show themselves totally dedicated to "the cause", having been entrusted with the carrying out the most sensitive actions.
All those investigated, says the instructor, share ideological principles favorable to independence and radical activism to achieve it; Its final objective as an organization, the judge maintains, was to achieve the independence of Catalonia, "using violence in its maximum expression, thus forcing, in a coercive way, the institutions to grant, through deeds, the separation of Catalonia from the rest of Spain".
