The Spanish government sacked the country's spy chief Paz Esteban following the disclosure of the use of Pegasus software to snoop on Spanish officials, a government source told Reuters on Tuesday, confirming a report by El Pais newspaper.
Last month, Canada's digital rights group Citizen Lab said more than 60 people linked to the Catalan separatist movement had been targets of Pegasus spyware made by Israel's NSO Group.
This prompted Catalonia's leftist pro-independence party ERC, a key ally of the Spanish minority government, to say it would not support it until Madrid took measures to restore confidence.
The Spanish government reported days after it had detected the Pegasus spyware in the mobile phones of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Defence Minister Margarita Robles. On Tuesday, they also said that Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska was also targeted, making them the third Spanish government official whose phone was hacked, likley by another state.
Esteban, who took up her position in 2020 after years of service as an agent with the National Intelligence Centre as the spying agency is known, appeared last week before lawmakers in Congress to explain the eavesdropping on Catalan leaders.
The committee at which she appeared is subject to official secrecy but the lawmakers in attendance said Esteban acknowledged that the spy agency wire-tapped 18 pro-independence leaders but always under court order, as the law requires.
Among those targeted were the current...
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