The Mossos d’Esquadra tried to acquire the Pegasus ‘software’ when Miquel Sàmper was in charge of the Department of the Interior. They ruled it out, according to what he assured, due to lack of “budget”. Now, the chief commissioner of the Corps, Josep Maria Estela, defends its usefulness in fighting organized crime. “It is clear that the Police have to have it.”
In an interview on TV3 this Friday, Estela reiterated that the Mossos do not have an espionage program, but stressed the need to have tools like this one to combat organized crime. “If it’s not Pegasus, one that looks like it.” she has said about the program.
The chief commissioner of the Corps has detailed that the Catalan Police has an application to intercept communications, something they always do, he stressed, “within a judicial investigation and with the corresponding judicial authorization.”
The Generalitat already tried to get hold of a program similar to Pegasus but less sophisticated –due to the time and the level of access of a regional government to this type of ‘software’-, such as Cerberus. It happened shortly before 2014 when Catalan nationalism began to lay the foundations for what would finally crystallize in what is known as the ‘procés’. So, there was talk that the foundations of the ‘Catalan CNI’ were being laid.
It was during the time of Artur Mas as president of the Generalitat, when a report from the Government was leaked that put on the table the need to create a security agency in the style of the CNI, the CIA (United States) or MI5 (United Kingdom) . Its creation at full capacity could only make sense in an independent Catalonia, it was recognized, but the foundations could already be laid. And tried to get Cerberus.
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