05 July 2022; MEMO: Morocco has filed a lawsuit against a Spanish journalist for his reporting of the Moroccan government and intelligence services using the advanced Israeli Pegasus spyware against him and others.
According to the news agency, AFP, yesterday, Morocco submitted the lawsuit to a court in the Spanish capital, Madrid, against the journalist, Ignacio Cembrero, accusing him of "slander" for reporting that Moroccan authorities had hacked his phone with the Pegasus spyware in 2019.
The Pegasus spyware – developed and owned by the Israeli NSO Group – was made infamous over the past few years as a result of its hacking scandals, particularly in July last year when the University of Toronto's internet watchdog, Citizen Lab, exposed its clients' misuse of the spyware through the hacking of around 50,000 phones and devices belonging to journalists, human rights activists and political critics worldwide.
Phones and devices infected with Pegasus spyware become fully compromised, with the users' data, pictures, messages and location being made accessible to the governments and agencies targeting them. Even the cameras and microphones on their devices can be activated without the users' knowledge. The infection of the devices can be achieved through the user clicking or opening a message or link, or even without any interaction at all through the latest 'zero-click' malware.
Amongst the multitude of governments and intelligence agencies which were revealed to have used the spyware were United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Bahrain and Morocco.
Rabat's lawyer denied the North African country's use of it; however, it insisted in the suit that "The reality is that the Kingdom of Morocco is not responsible for spying on D. Ignacio Cembrero, nor on any other citizen. The Kingdom of Morocco does not have the Pegasus program."
