Spain’s government has announced investigations into the country’s intelligence services after a rights group said spyware had been used to hack the telephones of Catalan separatist leaders.
Investigators at Canada’s Citizen Lab say that the mobile phones of at least 65 Catalan politicians including the Catalonia region’s current leader had been affected.
Citizen Lab, which focuses on high-tech human rights abuses, said it could not directly attribute the spying operations, but that circumstantial evidence pointed to Spanish authorities.
Spain’s presidency minister Felix Bolanos promised an internal investigation within the National Intelligence Centre, which would report to a parliamentary commission allowing legislators to access classified information.