Morocco to Appeal Court Ruling in Pegasus Spyware Case Against Spanish Journalist

The Madrid Court of First Instance has dismissed Morocco’s complaint demanding that journalist Ignacio Cembrero retract his accusations of espionage with the Israeli software Pegasus. But Judge Sonia Lence Muñoz considers in her judgment, to which The Objective had access, that the statements made by Cembrero "do not authorize the applicant to exercise a negative declaratory action, because these statements were made in response to the dissemination of a journalistic investigation [...] on persons who have been the subject of espionage by Pegasus."

For the magistrate, Cembrero noted that he was being spied on after seeing some of "his WhatsApp messages" published in the newspaper Maroc Diplomatique, close to the Moroccan authorities. With the decision of the Madrid court in his favor, the journalist specializing in the Maghreb thought that Morocco would give up the legal proceedings and that he would be able to "freely exercise his profession, without being harassed." But the lawyer for Morocco, Ernesto Díaz Bastién-López, has announced his intention to appeal the decision.

Morocco decided in August 2021 to initiate legal proceedings against media and journalists "for the repeated publication and dissemination on Spanish territory of false, malicious and insulting news" about the Pegasus case. This is the fourth time since 2014 that Cembrero has been prosecuted in court by the Moroccan authorities, after two charges of apology for terrorism, both of which were dismissed, and another by a businessman linked to the Moroccan intelligence services, which resulted in an acquittal.