Spanish judge authorizes probe into Israeli firm amid spyware investigation

Investigation will determine whether the NSO Group carried out 'actions or omissions'

A probe into Israel’s NSO Group behind the Pegasus spyware that was allegedly used for hacking the phones of Catalan politicians was authorized by a Spanish judge, according to the court documents released on Thursday.

The decision was made following a complaint filed on July 1 by Andreu Van den Eynde, a lawyer of the Catalan separatist ERC party, AFP reported. With over 60 phones targeted by Pegasus spyware, most of them belonged to the activists associated with ERC.

The lawyer himself was the victim of the phone tapping that took place between 2017 and 2020, along with the Catalan leader Pere Aragones, also an ERC member. Earlier this week, Aragones filed his own complaint against NSO and the former head of Spain's intelligence service. In May, the country's spy chief Paz Esteban was dismissed over the Pegasus scandal.

According to the Barcelona court documents seen by AFP, the Spanish probe will seek to establish whether NSO committed any crime "in the creation and provision of the Pegasus program to third parties."

It added that investigation will determine whether the Israeli company carried out "actions or omissions," which involved the "verification of, access to and extraction of information" on mobile phones.

Earlier in June, Spain’s High Court called the chief executive officer of NSO Group Shalev Hulio to testify as a witness.

The European Parliament created a special committee in March to investigate alleged breaches of law after accusations over the use of Pegasus software by governments for political purposes emerged in Hungary and Poland. Despite NSO Group denying the spying claims, the US Commerce Department banned the company in November.