Published time: December 13, 2013 09:35
Edited time: December 13, 2013 13:48
The Catalan regional parliament has set November next
year for a referendum on the Spanish province’s independence. The
government in Madrid blandly said the vote won’t happen, but activists
wonder how it might be stopped.
Catalonia’s four pro-independence parties, which hold a majority
in the regional parliament, announced Thursday that the rich
industrial Spanish province will hold a referendum on whether to
gain greater autonomy or even total independence from the
country’s central government.
The vote’s preliminary date is November 9, Catalan regional
government head Artur Mas said. The people will be asked two
questions: "Do you want Catalonia to be a state?" and "Do you
want that state to be independent?"
The former question was added for those Catalans who seek to
change Spain into a federation, with Catalonia forming part of
it. According to a Metroscopia poll in newspaper El Pais last
month, 46 percent of Catalans favor separatism versus 42 percent
who wish to remain within Spain. The support for greater
autonomy, however, is very strong.
Just minutes after the announcement Spanish Justice Minister
Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon rejected the idea, saying it would be
unconstitutional.
"The vote will not be held," he said.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy spoke out later in the day, saying
his government will not allow the Catalan referendum to happen.
Artur Mas announceas
that political parties in Catalonia have agreed to hold a referendum on
independence next November. Photograph: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images
Separatist parties in Spain's north-eastern Catalonia
region on Thursday agreed the wording of an independence referendum
proposed for November 2014 but the Spanish government immediately said
the vote was illegal and would not happen.
The Catalan regional
government head, Artur Mas, said the vote would ask two questions: "Do
you want Catalonia to be a state?" and: "Do you want that state to be
independent?"
Spain's justice minister, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón,
immediately said the vote could not take place because the constitution
would not allow it.
Spain’s public
prosecutor has opened a preliminary inquiry into allegations that the US
spy agency has conducted illegal surveillance operations on millions of
Spanish citizens.
Spain’s Attorney General Eduardo Torres-Dulce called for an
information gathering process to determine whether a crime was committed
and if Spain should consider opening a formal investigation, his office
said in a statement on Tuesday.
The public prosecutor's office said it would “determine
the reality of the facts and their circumstances” on whether the alleged
large-scale spying on Spanish citizens could involve criminal aspects
and evaluate their eventual penal consequences.
The statement comes a day after the Spanish Foreign Ministry
summoned American Ambassador James Costos regarding media reports that
the US National Security Agency (NSA) had spied on 60 million Spanish
telephone calls in a single month.
Spain has warned that mutual trust between Madrid and Washington could be broken if the allegations prove to be true.
Several other countries have also summoned US ambassadors to explain the NSA spying activities.
European countries announced they will send a nine-member delegation
to Washington to seek answers to US’ massive spying activities on
telephone and online communications of citizens and more than 35 world
leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
This is while Germany and Brazil are spearheading efforts to draft a
resolution at the United Nations General Assembly to condemn US spying
on other countries. The measure is gaining international support as 21
countries including France and Mexico have so far joined talks to hammer
out the resolution.
A Spanish citizen protests alleged surveillance by the US National Security Agency. Photograph: Vallejo/ vallejo/Demotix/Corbis
Spain's public prosecutor's office announced on Tuesday that it had launched a preliminary inquiry into the alleged widespread surveillance of Spanish citizens' private phone calls and emails by the US National Security Agency, to determine whether it could be prosecuted under Spanish law.
It was reported on Monday that the NSA had monitored 60.5m Spanish phone calls in the space of one month alone, in the latest revelations from the documents leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The
attorney general, Eduardo Torres-Dulce, issued a statement saying that,
having seen the media reports "about a possible interception and
irregular access to telephonic and/or electronic metadata ... by foreign
official services" it would determine the exact nature of any potential
crime and whether this could be punished under Spanish law.
The outcry comes days after it emerged that the NSA spied on the phone calls of scores of allies, including the personal phone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.
European spy services shared phone data with US in many cases: NSA chief
AFPOct 30, 2013, 02.48AM IST
WASHINGTON: US espionage chiefs hit back on Tuesday in a row over mass
spying, saying reports that American eavesdroppers scooped up millions
of phone records in Europe, were "completely false."
In a stunning twist to the transatlantic spying storm, General Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, said that in many cases European spy agencies had accessed phone records and shared them with the NSA.
The revelations came as a senior official said President Barack Obama
was considering banning US spies from tapping the telephones of allied
leaders, in the wake of German outrage over alleged snooping on
Chancellor Angela Merkel's communications.
America's European
allies have spent days angrily protesting after newspaper reports, based
on leaks from fugitive analyst Edward Snowden, that Washington
collected tens of millions of telephone calls and online communications
in Europe as part as a vast anti terror sweep.
But two top spy
agency chiefs testifying before Congress said the reports were based on a
misunderstanding of information passed by Snowden to European newspapers.
"The assertions by reporters in France, Spain, Italy that NSA collected
tens of millions of phone calls are completely false," Alexander told
the House Intelligence Committee.
"To be perfectly clear, this is not information that we collected on European citizens," he said.
Hours earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that electronic spying
was carried out by the intelligence agencies of France and Spain —
outside their own borders and sometimes in war zones — and was then
passed onto the NSA.
The claims, if true, could embarrass
European governments which have vehemently protested to the United
States about alleged overreaching and infringments on the privacy of its
citizens by the NSA.
Alexander said journalists had misinterpreted leaked data about the alleged spying operations.
"They cite as evidence screen shots of the results of a web tool used
for data management purposes, but both they and the person who stole the
classified data did not understand what they were looking at," he said. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, backed up claims that the European media reports were wrong.
"This was not the United States collecting on France and Germany. This
was France and Germany collecting. And it had nothing to do with their
citizens, it had to do with collecting in NATO areas of war, like Afghanistan," she said.
There was no immediate comment from the spy agencies in the European countries mentioned.
A man protests against NSA spying outside the foreign ministry in Madrid. Photograph: Juan Medina/Reuters
The widespread surveillance of Spanish citizens by the US National Security Agency, which caused outrage when it was reported this week, was the product of a collaboration with Spain's intelligence services, according to one Spanish newspaper.
In the latest revelations to emerge from the documents leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, Spanish agents not only knew about the work of the NSA but also facilitated it, El Mundo reports.
An
NSA document entitled "Sharing computer network operations cryptologic
information with foreign partners" reportedly shows how the US relies on
the collaboration of many countries to give it access to intelligence
information, including electronic metadata.
According to
the document seen by El Mundo, the US classifies cooperation with
various countries on four different levels. In the first group –
"Comprehensive Cooperation" – are the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The second group – "Focused Cooperation" – of which Spain is a member,
includes 19 countries, all of them European, apart from Japan
and South Korea. The third group – "Limited cooperation" – consists of
countries such as France, Israel, India and Pakistan; while the fourth –
"Exceptional Cooperation" – is made up of countries that the US
considers to be hostile to its interests.
The reports come a day
after the director of the NSA, General Keith B Alexander, testified
before the US house intelligence committee that suggestions the agency
monitored millions of calls in Spain, France and Italy were "completely
false" and that this data had been at least partially collected by the
intelligence services of those countries and then passed on to the NSA.
The US National Security Agency spied on more than 60 million phone calls in Spain in one month alone, according to a document published by a Spanish newspaper.
The report in El Mundo comes a week after Le Monde reported similar allegations of US spying in France, and German magazine Der Spiegel reported that a document shows that Washington tapped chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.
El Mundo said that a document provided by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden shows that the NSA monitored the phone calls from December 10th, 2012 until January 8th, 2013 but not their content.
Meanwhile a German newspaper said yesterday that US president Barack Obama
knew his intelligence service was eavesdropping on Dr Merkel as long
ago as 2010, contradicting reports that he had told the German leader he
did not know.
Germany
received information this week that the NSA had bugged Dr Merkel’s
mobile phone, prompting Berlin to summon the US ambassador, a move
unprecedented in post-war relations between the close allies.
The
NSA denied that Mr Obama had been informed about the operation by the
NSA chief in 2010, as reported by the German newspaper. But the agency
did not comment directly on whether Mr Obama knew about the bugging of
Dr Merkel’s phone.
Both the White House
and the German government declined comment. The Wall Street Journal
reported yesterday that the NSA ended the program that involved Merkel
after the operation was uncovered in an Obama administration review that
began this summer. The NSA was not immediately available for comment on
the report.
US ambassador to
Spain, James Costos, arrives at Spain's foreign ministry to discuss the
alleged US spying on Spanish leaders Photograph: Kote Rodrigo/EPA
The Spanish government has warned of a potential breakdown of
trust with the US following reports that the National Security Agency
monitored more than 60m phone calls in Spain in the space of one month.
As the White House struggled to contain a growing diplomatic crisis with its allies across the world, Madrid summoned the US ambassador to Spain to demand an explanation of the extent of US spying. The NSA is alleged to have intercepted 60.5m phone calls in Spain between 10 December 2012 and 8 January 2013.
In the latest revelations from the documents leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, El Mundo newspaper
published an NSA graphic, entitled "Spain – last 30 days", showing the
daily flow of phone calls within Spain. On one day alone – 11 December
2012 – the NSA reportedly monitored more than 3.5m phone calls.
The
outcry comes days after it emerged that the NSA spied on the phone
calls of scores of allies, including the personal phone of the German
chancellor, Angela Merkel.
It appears that the content of the
calls was not monitored but the NSA recorded the serial and phone
numbers of the handsets used, the locations, sim cards and the duration
of the calls. Emails and other social media were also monitored in what
human rights groups have called an extraordinary invasion of people's privacy. El Mundo said software called Boundless Informant was used to process the information.
Following
the meeting between the US ambassador, James Costos, and Spanish
government ministers, the foreign ministry released a statement, saying:
"Spain has relayed to the United States
the importance of preserving a climate of trust … and its interest in
understanding the full reach of practices that, if true, would be
considered inappropriate and unacceptable between allies".
Costos
said Washington acknowledged "that some of our closest allies have
raised concerns about the recent series of unauthorised disclosures of
classified information". However, he defended the NSA, saying it had not
only played a critical role in protecting the US, but had "also played
an instrumental role in our co-ordination with our allies and in
protecting their interests, as well."
US President Barack Obama is being dragged further into the transatlantic spying row after new allegations are made.
Video: The new claims contradict what Mr Obama told Mrs Merkel
Barack Obama knew three
years ago that his intelligence service was eavesdropping on Angela
Merkel, according to a newspaper, despite reports he told the German
leader he knew nothing about the situation.
Bild am Sonntag claimed the US President allowed US intelligence to
continue listening to the German Chancellor's calls, after being briefed
on the operation by the National Security Agency in 2010.
It also alleged that Mr Obama personally authorised the monitoring of Mrs Merkel's mobile phone.
Germany received information last week that the US National Security
Agency (NSA) had bugged Mrs Merkel's phone, prompting Berlin to summon
the US ambassador - a move unprecedented in post-war relations between
the close allies.
The NSA denied Mr Obama had been informed about the operation by the
NSA chief in 2010, as reported by the newspaper, but the agency did not
comment on whether Mr Obama knew about the bugging of Mrs Merkel's
phone.
Both the White House and the German government declined to comment.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the NSA ended the
programme that involved Mrs Merkel after the operation was uncovered in
an Obama administration review that began this summer.
The programme also involved as many as 35 other world leaders, some of
whom were still being monitored, according to the WSJ report, which was
attributed to US officials.
Demonstrators in Morocco protest against the release of Daniel Galván. Photograph: Abdelhak Senna/EPA
A convicted Spanish paedophile whose pardon by the King of Morocco sparked riots there has been arrested in Murcia in south-east Spain.
Daniel
Galván's arrest is the latest episode in a diplomatic farce that began
with his release at the end of July along with 47 other Spanish
prisoners held in Moroccan jails, the majority of them on drugs charges,
after Spain's King Juan Carlos allegedly appealed for their pardon.
He
was released on Sunday after serving barely two years of his 30-year
sentence for sexually abusing 11 children aged between three and 14,
leading to riots in front of the parliament building in the Moroccan
capital, Rabat.
In response to the protests, Morocco's King
Mohammed VI revoked Galván's pardon late on Sunday, saying he would
never have granted it had he been aware of the seriousness of his crimes
– but Galván had already left the country.
Initially there was
speculation that Galván, an Iraqi with Spanish citizenship, was pardoned
on the orders of Spain's secret service, for whom he had allegedly been
working as a spy in Iraq.
It then emerged that the Moroccan
authorities had been presented with two lists by the Spanish government:
one with the names of 15 prisoners to be pardoned, and the other with
33 prisoners to be sent to Spain to complete their sentences. The king
mistakenly pardoned them all, including Galván, who went to Spain with
the help of Spanish authorities.
An aerial view taken shows cleaning works at the US embassy in Berlin. Photograph: Reuters/Euroluftbild.de/Robert Grahn 
