Spain’s government has fired the director of its top intelligence agency amid two separate cases of the hacking of politicians’ mobile phones using Pegasus spyware, according to the country’s defence minister.
Paz Esteban, the first woman to head Spain’s National Intelligence Centre (CNI), will be replaced, Defence Minister Margarita Robles whose ministry oversees the agency, told a news conference on Tuesday.
The decision comes after Esteban admitted last week in a closed-door committee of Spain’s parliament that her agency had legally hacked the phones of several Catalan separatists after receiving judicial permission.
Her agency is also under scrutiny for recent revelations by the government that the mobile phones of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Defence Minister Margarita Robles were also infected with the Pegasus spyware by an “external” power.
On Tuesday, the government spokesperson Isabel Rodriguez said Pegasus was also detected in the mobile phone of Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska last year.
Credit: Aljazeera.com
