Paris (AFP)

The Pegasus case is now in the hands of French justice which opened an investigation Tuesday to examine the complaint of journalists whose infiltration of phones on behalf of Morocco was revealed by a media consortium, which Rabat disputes.

Several media including the daily newspapers Le Monde, the Guardian and the Washington Post revealed Sunday that the journalist of Mediapart Lénaïg Bredoux and the founder of the site Edwy Plenel are among the more than 180 journalists spied around the world via this software of a company Israeli on behalf of various States, in this case by Morocco.

In response, the news site filed a complaint on Monday.

Also targeted by this espionage attributed to Morocco, the Chained Duck decided to file a complaint "for the second time in its history".

Her former collaborator Dominique Simonnot, who became Controller General of Prisons, is among the journalists whose phone has been hacked and she also intends to file a complaint.

For its part, the Reporters Without Borders association announced on Tuesday that it had filed a complaint in Paris, before others internationally.

RSF defends in particular the Franco-Moroccan journalists Omar Brouksy and Maâti Monjib, opponents also victims of the software.

These various complaints are intended to be joined to the judicial inquiry opened on Tuesday.

For Mediapart, the purpose of this espionage was to try to "silence independent journalists in Morocco, by seeking to know how we were investigating in this area".

This information is "false allegations devoid of any foundation", defended the Moroccan government, denying having acquired "computer software to infiltrate communication devices".

According to Le Monde, in addition to Moroccan journalists, "about thirty French journalists and media bosses are on Pegasus' target list", not all of them necessarily having been subsequently hacked.

The investigation in France starts with a list of ten potential offenses including "invasion of privacy", "interception of correspondence", "fraudulent access" to a computer system and "criminal association" , detailed in a press release the Paris prosecutor's office.

The investigation also targets other offenses, such as the fraudulent entry, extraction and transmission of data, potentially attributable to Pegasus users.

It also concerns the "provision and possession of equipment" allowing attacks on a data system and "the unauthorized offer and sale of a data capture device", which could apply to the marketing of the software and to the intermediaries involved.

The investigations were entrusted to the Central Office for the fight against crime related to information and communication technologies (OCLCTIC), said the prosecution.

- "Major attack on journalism" -

According to the investigation published on Sunday by a consortium of 17 international media outlets, the Pegasus software, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, would have made it possible to spy on the numbers of at least 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 activists of the human rights or 65 business leaders from different countries.

Pegasus spyware, introduced in a smartphone, allows you to retrieve messages, photos, contacts and even listen to calls from its owner.

The consortium's work is based on a list obtained by Forbidden Stories, a network based in France, and Amnesty International.

It has, according to them, 50,000 phone numbers selected by NSO customers since 2016 for potential surveillance.

The revelations sparked outrage from human rights organizations, media and political leaders around the world.

NSO, regularly accused of playing the game of authoritarian regimes, assures that its software is used only to obtain information against criminal or terrorist networks.

The group once again "firmly denied the false accusations made" in the investigation, according to it "full of erroneous assumptions and unsubstantiated theories", specifying that it is considering defamation proceedings.

© 2021 AFP