Morocco Sues French Newspaper Over Pegasus Spyware Allegations

New judicial reprisals by Morocco in France in the context of the revelations of the "Pegasus Project". This time, the kingdom has filed a complaint for defamation against the daily L’Humanité, reports AFP. At the end of July, the Moroccan intelligence services were accused of having targeted French journalists from the newspaper Le Monde, France Télévisions, France 24, L’Humanité (the journalist author of the article targeted by the complaint, Rosa Moussaoui), their Moroccan and Algerian counterparts, French and Algerian personalities, human rights defenders, with a view to possibly infecting their phones with the powerful spyware Pegasus, 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." Also, it had stressed "the media collective, in all the press articles it has disseminated, is currently unable to provide evidence to support its allegations."

Before L’Humanité, the kingdom had filed a defamation lawsuit against Forbidden Stories, Le Monde, Radio France, Mediapart and Amnesty International. French media such as Mediapart and Canard enchaîné had in turn filed a complaint against Morocco in Paris.