French Court to Examine Morocco’s Defamation Claims in Pegasus Spyware Case

A procedural hearing was held before the 17th Correctional Chamber last Tuesday, during which the public prosecutor’s office announced that it would request the inadmissibility of the direct summons, based on a recent case law of the Court of Cassation. In the past, Morocco had seized the Court, after several rejections of its complaints. In 2019, the Court ruled that a State could not bring public defamation proceedings, as it is not a "private individual" within the meaning of the law on freedom of the press.

"The Kingdom of Morocco does not refuse and does not fear a hearing on the inadmissibility," Olivier Baratelli, the lawyer for Morocco, reacted to the AFP. He deplores a "procedural device, created from scratch by the defendants to try to avoid the substantive debate." According to him, Morocco is "perfectly admissible." He also stated that the kingdom is determined "to pursue in defamation, all those who may have claimed" that it "had used the Pegasus software." "This is absolutely false."

During the hearing, the court also ordered the Moroccan state to pay 10,000 euros in security for each of the ten direct citations filed against Le Monde, Radio France, France Media Monde, Mediapart, L’Humanité, Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International.

In late July, Moroccan intelligence services were accused of having targeted French journalists from the newspaper Le Monde, France Télévisions, France 24, L’Humanité, their Moroccan and Algerian counterparts, French and Algerian personalities, and human rights defenders, with a view to possibly infecting their phones with the powerful Pegasus spyware, manufactured by the Israeli company NSO Group.

Accusations that Rabat had rejected. In a statement, Morocco had assured that it had "never acquired computer software to infiltrate communication devices, just as the Moroccan authorities have never resorted to this kind of act." It also stressed that "the media collective, in all the press articles it has disseminated, is currently unable to provide evidence to support its allegations."