Brussels (AFP)

The first Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism, created in memory of the murdered Maltese journalist, was awarded Thursday to the media network Forbidden Stories for its "Pegasus" investigation into Israeli spyware.

This new award was created at the end of 2019, at the initiative of the European Parliament, to pay tribute to the Maltese anti-corruption journalist and blogger killed at 53 in 2017 in the explosion of her car which had been bombed.

Awarded by a jury of representatives of the press and civil society from the 27 Member States, and endowed with a reward of 20,000 euros, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize will be awarded each year on October 16, the date of his assassination.

It intends to reward "excellent journalism which promotes and defends the values ​​and principles of the EU: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights".

Forbidden Stories is a collaborative platform launched in 2017 based on an idea by French documentary filmmaker Laurent Richard, with the support of the NGO Reporters Without Borders, and which brings together more than 30 media around the world.

Under the leadership of the platform, a consortium of seventeen international media - including Le Monde, The Guardian and The Washington Post -, bringing together some 80 journalists in ten countries, revealed last July the extensive use of spyware by the company NSO Group.

The latter, which makes it possible to recover the contents of infected smartphones, would have targeted at least 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 human rights activists or 65 business leaders, in many countries (India, Mexico, Hungary, Morocco, France ...), according to the Forbidden Stories survey, conducted with the technical support of the NGO Amnesty International.

The first investigation of Forbidden Stories, the "Daphne Project", was launched in late 2017 after the death of the journalist.

For six months, 45 journalists from 18 different media had worked on the enormous mass of documents left by their colleague, revealing in particular the controversial practice of "golden passports" by Malta.

Suspected of interference in the investigation into the journalist's assassination, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had resigned.

50,000 phone numbers possibly spied on by Pegasus Omar KAMAL AFP / Archives

Since the launch of Forbidden Stories, more than a hundred journalists from nearly forty different countries have participated in collaborative investigations - notably on the Mexican drug cartels and the "Green Blood" project on environmental damage and abuse. mining companies in India, Tanzania and Guatemala.

© 2021 AFP