- Advertisement -
It is one of the biggest spy scandals of the decade, revealed by fifteen international media. At least 50,000 people are monitored by a dozen states with Israeli software. Pegasus lets you take control of a phone, providing access to the entire contents of the device as well as its microphone and camera. Among the user countries, Morocco.
According to’international survey, the Moroccan security service also systematically uses Pegasus against journalists and power critics. By 2020, Amnesty International had already revealed the infection in the investigative journalist Omar Radi.
Two days later, an investigation was launched against him. His trial for “rape” and “espionage” is currently taking place in Casablanca.
►Also read : Radi cases in Morocco: difficult times for the press and restrictions on freedoms
The editor-in-chief of Akhbar al Youm, Taoufik Bouachrine, is serving a 15-year prison sentence for rape. Her number is on Pegasus’ list along with at least five complainants. Some of them had also withdrawn, claiming that they had been forced to testify falsely.
► Also read : In Morocco, the 100th day of hunger strike for journalist Soulaïmane Raissouni
The Moroccan authorities have also spied on foreign journalists, including some thirty French.
For example, the founder of Mediapart Edwy Plenel was targeted after publicly criticizing the police repression of demonstrations in Morocco. The journalist from the same media, Lenaïg Bredoux, who worked in Morocco, was also a victim of this espionage.
Our hypothesis is that we are in fact a Trojan horse that is actually attacking Moroccan journalists …
Lénaïg Bredoux, journalist at Médiapart
Another goal Bruno Delport, head of TSF Jazz Radio but also chairman of the board of Solidarité Sida, a non-governmental organization working with prostitutes in Morocco.
“A fragile regime … that doubts itself”
Freelance journalist Omar Brouksy has been followed by Pegasus. He joined Gaëlle Laleix from the Africa Service and explained that he had been“a little shaken ”when reading the list of people monitored by the software. “Before me are friends, like Omar Radiet, other activists, like Fouad Abdelmoumni, who is an economist … I read the survey and am impressed by the number of people who have been the target of this software in Morocco and outside Morocco. ! It’s pretty impressive!
I do not understand why all this mess, all these means are used to spy on people, when Morocco is a poor country, it is a prudent regime, not based on solid institutions, prone to anything and everything. Everyone … So for me, it’s a fragile diet. A regime that relies on solid institutions could not resort to such methods, so it is a regime that doubts itself ”.
The private company that markets Pegasus is structurally linked to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Mediapart also points out that the vast majority of customer countries have intensified their relations with Israel in recent years. But it is still unclear whether the Israeli intelligence services use this technology and whether they have access to information obtained from other countries? In any case, investigators promise new revelations in the coming days
.
