Morocco Denies Using Pegasus Spyware to Target Journalists and Officials

Morocco breaks its silence on the Pegasus Affair revealed by the Forbidden Stories consortium. Implicated, the kingdom categorically denied on Monday, in a press release, the use of the Pegasus software by its security services.

The government expressed "its great astonishment at the publication of false information in which their authors falsely claim that Morocco has infiltrated the phones of several national and foreign public figures and officials of international organizations through computer software".

To this end, the government states "that it categorically rejects and condemns these false and unfounded allegations, like previous similar allegations from Amnesty International on this subject".

"Morocco is a state of law, which guarantees the confidentiality of personal communications by the force of the Constitution and by virtue of the Kingdom’s conventional commitments and the legal and non-judicial mechanisms guaranteeing the protection of personal data and cybersecurity to all citizens and foreign residents in Morocco," the government specifies, adding that the constitution prohibits and punishes this practice. The authorities could therefore not make use of it.

Morocco assures that it "has never acquired computer software to infiltrate communication devices, just as the Moroccan authorities have never resorted to this kind of act," stressing that "the media collective, in all the press articles it has disseminated, is so far unable to provide evidence to support its allegations".

This is why the kingdom reserves the right to take the measures it deems appropriate in the face of the false allegations disseminated by the aforementioned collective and which aim to undermine the country’s image, its achievements in the field of fundamental freedoms and rights, its status and its supreme interests, concludes the press release.