Pegasus in Morocco: who uses the spyware of the Israeli company NSO?
Project Pegasus, the gigantic spy scandal revealed Monday after months of investigation, has sparked outrage, criticism and diplomatic tensions around the world.
Thomas SAMSON AFP / File
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
Pointed at in the Pegasus scandal, Morocco denounces a false media campaign.
The country is one of the top states indexed since the start of the week by a consortium of 17 international newspapers for its use of Israeli surveillance software.
The case took an even more embarrassing turn with the revelation that numbers of French politicians, including one of President Macron's, could be the target of attempted espionage.
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According to the analysis conducted by Forbidden Stories
, Amnesty International and published in France by the newspaper
Le Monde
, two Moroccan services are clients of the Israeli company NSO, creator of Pegasus.
These are the General Directorate of Studies and Documentation and the General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance.
The first, known as DGED, is the country's foreign intelligence service, responsible in particular for counterterrorism.
For example, it monitors activists for the cause of Western Sahara, including in France, and one can imagine, within the Algerian authorities, the main support of the Polisario Front.
The second, known as DGST, is the internal surveillance service, and according to Forbidden Stories, it would be the main user of the software, to monitor journalists, opponents, politicians, but also the entourage of King Mohamed VI, the people who he meets his family, in particular his cousin Hicham Alaoui, critic of the regime, called the “red prince” and stripped of his title.
A historic ally
Embarrassing accusations for Rabat, which is one of the main allies of Western countries on intelligence matters and in the first place of France, a historic ally.
Emmanuel Macron had booked his first presidential trip to Morocco, a sign of close relations, further confirmed by the visit on Monday evening of the head of Moroccan diplomacy to Paris to meet his counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian.
Morocco is known for the efficiency of its services, its human intelligence, but also technological, which has relatively preserved the kingdom from terrorism.
Rabat also provided crucial information on several people in Europe, especially in 2015, allowing
the location of the main perpetrator of the attacks of November 13 in Paris
, the Belgian-Moroccan Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
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