The mystery of the list of 200 target Spanish mobiles of Pegasus that was never revealed

“More than 200 Spanish mobile numbers likely targets of the Pegasus spy program,” headlined the British newspaper The Guardian on May 3 last year.. “The data leak reveals the magnitude of the potential surveillance of an NSO Group client believed to be Morocco,” added the chronicle signed by Stephanie Kirchgaessner, head of investigation for that newspaper..

15 months later, virtually nothing is known about that list of devices that were targeted by the Pegasus malware made by the Israeli company NSO. This list refers to mobile phones hacked in 2019 and not to those of four members of the Spanish Government, starting with that of President Pedro Sánchez, who were infected a year later (between October 2020 and December 2021), according to the judge's order. José Luis Calama of the National Court last July.

Thanks to a leak, the Forbidden Stories journalistic consortium revealed, as of July 18, 2021, that some 10,000 phones were targeted by the Moroccan secret services with Pegasus just before the pandemic, although not all were infected.. Rabat denied this information and took several media outlets and journalists to court, but their demands have been dismissed.. New information appears regularly that undermines the credibility of this denial. The Israeli daily Haaretz revealed, for example, in May that the Israeli authorities had prohibited NSO from renewing the license granted to Morocco to use Pegasus.

Most of these devices, more than 6,000, were Algerian, and more than a thousand were French, starting with that of President Emmanuel Macron, of 14 members of his government and there were also journalists, Moroccan exiles, French activists and businessmen.. The French authorities found out from Forbidden Stories about this massive espionage that their security services confirmed after the fact.

It is difficult to understand that, after the publication of this journalistic investigation, the security departments of the Executive, and especially the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Government, which was then headed by Félix Bolaños, did not take more measures to more effectively protect the mobile phones that used by high officials of the State. Sánchez's was attacked, for the last time, in December 2021, five months after the Forbidden Stories revelations.

From the outset, in July 2021, Forbidden Stories only indicated a Spanish motive, that of the author of this chronicle, as the objective of Pegasus. Throughout the summer of 2021, he also revealed the names of the owners of two other Spanish devices: the Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet, exiled in Barcelona, and the famous Saharawi activist Aminatú Haidar, who lives in El Aaiún (Western Sahara), but has a telephone number of a Spanish operator. It was only learned that another 200 Spanish numbers had also been targeted by Morocco at a later stage of the investigation..

The Forbidden Stories journalistic consortium involves 17 major media outlets, from The Guardian to Le Monde, including The Washington Post and the Süd Deutsche Zeitung.. For the investigation named Pegasus Project, the NGO Amnesty International was added to them, which has a specialized cybersecurity laboratory in Berlin.. No Spanish media participate in the consortium.

Stephanie Kirchgaessner, from The Guardian, confirmed to El Confidencial, in May of last year, that they would find out who were the holders of that list of 200 numbers to bring it to light. Sandrine Rigaud, coordinator of Forbidden Stories, explained, for her part, that, as the journalistic consortium did not include any Spanish media among its members, it had sought one, the newspaper El País, to collaborate on the Spanish side of the Pegasus Project..

Something must have been investigated because one of those who appeared on the list of 200 received a call to ask him who he was and, above all, what reasons could have prompted the Moroccan intelligence agencies to spy on him. One of them was, for example, Brahim Dahane, a Saharawi founder in El Aaiún of an association for the defense of human rights and today in exile in Oviedo..

15 months after The Guardian revealed the existence of that Spanish list, none of the media belonging to Forbidden Stories has published the result of the investigation that should have started in the spring of 2022. Asked about this delay or lack of interest in disclosing the names of the Spaniards whose devices were targeted by Pegasus four years ago, Sandrine Rigaud, coordinator of Forbidden Stories, did not respond and neither did the newspaper El País..

The mystery persists: which Spanish mobile phone holders were the target of attacks with Pegasus in 2019 by the Moroccan neighbor?