The organization of the Solidarity Alert Against Repression has attended the National Hearing of Spain in the framework of the surveillance of militants published by La Direct on October 10. The media has had access to documents that have recently been considered art secrets, and thanks to the exploratory work it has been possible to see that the Ministry of the Interior spy on 38 militants from the Independence Left and the CDRs for at least 2018 and 2019 years. Solidarity Alerts filed a statement with Xavier Pellicer’s firm on Monday before the National Court of Spain to clarify whether operational espionage is underway. Pellicer is one of the militants affected by operational espionage; he is currently a member of the CUP in the Catalan Parliament, but when he was stalked he was a spokesperson for Solidarity Alert.
According to La Direct, the letter presented by the anti-repressive organization not only asked whether operational espionage is still working, but also other questions. For example, the question was asked as to why the investigation was initiated or as to the current state of the process. According to the Solidarity Alert, the mass espionage carried out by the Civil Guard and the Spanish Police has been carried out for future purposes, which is not considered legal. "The research aims to identify with names and surnames the works that militants of the Independence Left or linked to the DRCs carry out in political organizations". They stress that to this end they have used the "diffuse umbrella of the fight against terrorism", without factual and legal funds, which gives rise to spying operations in various and abusive ways. In this regard, they have denounced that the investigation carried out against the militants through zeal has clearly violated individual rights. Even taking into account the collective dimension of the infringement, they qualify what happened as "an attack by the Spanish State against Catalan independence".
In operational espionage, the police controlled the militants’ mobile phones, read SMS messages and listen to phone conversations – some of them transcribing –, knew the geolocations of the moment, had access to Gmail and social networks – Twitter and Facebook – and contaminated mobiles with spy software. The latter, according to La Direct, "with the objective of accessing the Signal and Telegram messaging applications and the email provider Protonmail". In addition, the militants have been followed on the street, putting beacons for geolocation in the cars or following the Policemen in street clothes. The vigour documents explored by La Direct include photos of street tracks.
The three names that appear in the title of this article do not match the reality of the people so called. Marc Hernàndez Pons, Dani Hernàndez Pons and Ramón Martínez Hernàndez were the false identities attributed by the Ministry of the Interior to three agents of the... [+]