Pegasus: ABC's scoop and the missing Moroccan witness

Pegasus: Ketty Garat's scoop and the witness who never shows up

The week's most widespread scoop rests on a hard-to-swallow paradox: the person who, according to published reports, would be able to reveal the contents of Pedro Sánchez's phone has not yet shown a single piece of evidence in public. The rest is already in motion. The headline, the TV set, the ministerial anger and a controversy threatening to become another long chapter in the Pegasus saga. Journalist Ketty Garat has put the missing piece on the table; the question is who will hold it up when the noise dies down.

What exactly does ABC's scoop claim?

According to information published by ABC and later broadcast on television, Segarro's deputy intelligence chief allegedly infected the Prime Minister's phone and would be able to offer its contents. The four-minute appearance on the programme Horizonte acted as a sounding board: a front-page headline turned into a clip, and a clip turned into national conversation.

It is worth separating two levels. One is technological: what was done, with what tool and to what extent. The other, far more uncomfortable, is human: who is telling it, why now and with what guarantees. The account attributes the operation to a foreign intelligence structure, but to date not a single verifiable document has emerged beyond the journalistic narrative itself.

The witness living between Madrid and Cáceres

El Debate placed the alleged former deputy chief of Segarro espionage hiding between a flat in Madrid and a country estate in Cáceres, presenting him as one of the members of Mohamed VI's intelligence network leadership. A profile that, if confirmed, would explain both the journalistic interest and the antiestéticar of the person telling it.

The reaction was swift. Mehdi Hijaouy's lawyers issued a statement from Paris dated 9 September 2026 in which they denied "in the strongest terms" the allegations published by the Spanish newspaper. Translated: the scoop relies on a source who, for now, formally denies being the source.

The legal mess: publishing someone else's data has consequences

Here the most uncomfortable flank of the matter appears. Disseminating the personal content of someone else's device has incivil consequences for almost anyone. That a media outlet intends to publish the material from an institutional phone and come out unscathed is, at the very least, an asymmetry that the law does not view kindly.

Add to that the standoff with the Public Prosecutor's Office. The version defended from the journalistic platform is that the evidence would already have been provided and that the refusal to go through official channels forces a resort to public opinion. The problem with the argument is the usual one: what does not pass through a court rarely ends up being proven before the public.

Cembrero, Puente and the background noise

The controversy has splashed other names. Ignacio Cembrero has denied being behind the leak known as Jabaroot, and the public exchange of messages between the two journalists has made clear that the relationship is broken. Minister Óscar Puente, for his part, responded sarcastically to a reflection about wolves that fall silent and dogs that bark. None of this provides a single piece of evidence. It does explain the climate.

The Israeli software and the underlying scepticism

There is a technical detail that is barely discussed: Pegasus is Israeli software and, as has been publicly noted, would have a backdoor attributed to Mossad. If that is the case, any content extracted from the phone passed first through hands that are neither Segarro nor Spanish. A nuance that unsettles much of the official narrative of the scoop.

And then there is fatigue. The dominant suspicion is that, whatever is published, there will be no consequences: no resignations, no charges, not even a correction. The recurring reference to 72 hours, half-jokingly half-seriously, sums up that distrust. On the other side, there are those who recall that this journalist has for years been announcing things that were later confirmed through the courts, and those who maintain that she lives off manufacturing expectation. The full material of the alleged hack, with names, dates and operational details, is the piece that no one has put on the table.

The usual doubt remains, the one no TV set resolves: if the source does not show the material and the courts do not validate it, what is left of the scoop—a real case, a decoy or the umpteenth promise that fades in three days?