BARCELONA: A Spanish judge will travel to Israel to seek testimony from the head of tech company NSO, the maker of the controversial Pegasus spyware used in tapping politicians’ phones in Spain, the country’s National Court said Tuesday.
The court said that José Luis Calama has decided to lead a judicial commission that will travel to Israel to “take testimony from the CEO of the company that commercializes the Pegasus program.”
Shalev Hulio is the CEO of the Tel Aviv-based NSO Group. The court gave no date for the judge’s trip.
When asked for comment by The Associated Press, a NSO Group’s spokesperson said: “NSO operates under a strict legal framework, and is confident that this will be the result any government inquiry will reach.”
The information was made public after the judge removed the seal of secrecy from the case concerning the hacking of the cellphones of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Spain’s ministers of defense and interior in May and June 2021.
The cyberattack coincided with a diplomatic rift between Spain and Morocco. But Spain’s government, which took the case to Spanish court on discovering the hacks last month, has only said that the hacks came from an “external” power. Moroccan officials have yet to speak on the matter.
NSO says that it only sells its Pegasus spyware to governments for security purposes. Pegasus has been linked to the hacking of other political leaders and activists in other countries. NSO has denied playing any part of this apparent misuse of its evasive technology that has come to light thanks to the work of digital-rights groups inspecting individual phones.
Judge Calama also cited Spain’s Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, to answer questions on July 5.
The court also said that the judge had already questioned the former chief of Spain’s intelligence agency, Paz Esteban, who was fired after the phone hacking was revealed. In what is apparently a separate use of Pegasus by Spain, Esteban acknowledged that her agency had used the technology to tap the phones of some Catalan separatist politicians.
Spanish judge to seek testimony from NSO on Pegasus spyware
https://arab.news/pr9c7
Spanish judge to seek testimony from NSO on Pegasus spyware
- José Luis Calama has decided to lead a judicial commission that will travel to Israel
- NSO says that it only sells its Pegasus spyware to governments for security purposes
Rubio says new governance bodies for Gaza will be in place soon
- Rubio said progress had been made recently in identifying Palestinians to join the technocratic group and that Washington aimed to get the governance bodies in place “very soon,” without offering a specific timeline.
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that a new governance structure for Gaza — made up of an international board and a group of Palestinian technocrats — would be in place soon, followed by the deployment of foreign troops, as the US hopes to cement a fragile ceasefire in Israel’s war in the Palestinian enclave.
Rubio, speaking at a year-end news conference, said the status quo was not sustainable in Gaza, where Israel has continued to strike Hamas targets while the group has reasserted its control since the October peace agreement brokered by the US.
“That’s why we have a sense of urgency about bringing phase one to its full completion, which is the establishment of the Board of Peace, and the establishment of the Palestinian technocratic authority or organization that’s going to be on the ground, and then the stabilization force comes closely thereafter,” Rubio said.
Rubio said progress had been made recently in identifying Palestinians to join the technocratic group and that Washington aimed to get the governance bodies in place “very soon,” without offering a specific timeline. Rubio was speaking after the US Central Command hosted a conference in Doha this week with partner nations to plan the International Stabilization Force for Gaza.
Two US officials said last week that international troops could be deployed in the strip as early as next month, following the UN Security Council’s November vote to authorize the force.
It remains unclear how Hamas will be disarmed, and countries considering contributing troops to the ISF are wary that Hamas will engage their soldiers in combat.
Rubio did not specify who would be responsible for disarming Hamas and conceded that countries contributing troops want to know the ISF’s specific mandate and how it will be funded.
“I think we owe them a few more answers before we can ask anybody to commit firmly, but I feel very confident that we have a number of nation states acceptable to all sides in this who are willing to step forward and be a part of that stabilization force,” Rubio said, noting that Pakistan was among the countries that had expressed interest.
Establishing security and governance was key to securing donor funding for reconstruction in Gaza, Rubio added.
“Who’s going to pledge billions of dollars to build things that are going to get blown up again because a war starts?” Rubio said, discussing the possibility of a donor conference to raise reconstruction funds.
“They want to know who’s in charge, and they want to know that there’s security so and that there’ll be long term stability.”
