Moroccan Journalists Detail Years of Alleged Surveillance as Amnesty International Exposes Spyware Operation

A new report from Amnesty International has reignited scrutiny of Morocco's alleged use of military-grade spyware against journalists, activists, and human rights defenders, drawing on testimony from a whistleblower and several individuals who say they were targeted for years.

The report, titled "We Start With the Verdict: Inside Morocco's Surveillance Machine," was produced in collaboration with 14 media organizations and coordinated by the Paris-based journalism network Forbidden Stories. It names four individuals whose cases are documented in detail and alleges that Morocco's General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance, known by its French acronym DGST, deployed Pegasus spyware against critics of the state between 2017 and 2021.

Among those profiled is Omar Radi, a Moroccan journalist and human rights defender who now lives in Germany. Radi told Al Jazeera that his surveillance was not tied to any single article but rather to his broader investigative work. "I was investigating land dispossession in Morocco. I then learned I was a Pegasus target," he said, referring to the mobile surveillance tool developed by Israeli firm NSO Group.

Radi said he began noticing signs of intrusion between 2018 and 2020, including his phone battery draining unusually fast, the device heating up, and his network connection slowing down. The physical surveillance, he added, was hardly subtle. He described daily visits by people who appeared to be collecting reports from parking attendants, shop owners, and friends in his neighborhood. On some occasions, he said, he turned around and walked toward those following him to take photographs, but they would flee quickly and conceal their faces.

The findings first came to light in June 2020, when Amnesty International's Security Lab examined Radi's phone and concluded it had been targeted with Pegasus. The spyware, developed by NSO Group, is capable of infiltrating a device without the user clicking a link, giving operators access to messages, calls, photographs, and audio recordings.

Amnesty's latest report draws heavily on interviews with a whistleblower identified only by the pseudonym Safir, a former employee of the DGST. The organization said it corroborated key elements of Safir's account using independent sources, technical evidence, and interviews with 10 people identified as surveillance targets, including Radi.

According to Radi, the report helped explain the unusual nature of his police interrogations and trial. He said many of his rights were not respected during legal proceedings because even judicial police and judges were operating under monitoring. "The Amnesty report connected many dots as to what I was living and feeling while I was under tight surveillance," he told Al Jazeera.

The other individuals profiled in the report are Fouad Abdelmoumni, a veteran activist; Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui, a human rights lawyer; and Hicham Mansouri, a journalist living in exile who was imprisoned in 2015 on charges of adultery and sexual exploitation. Amnesty has described those charges as trumped-up.

The report alleges that Morocco's Pegasus operations were fully operational by October 2017. It points to the case of El Bouchattaoui, whose phone number was entered into the system in September 2017 and selected for targeting weeks before he received an infection link via text message. Amnesty said its analysis of Pegasus records matched 103 Moroccan phone numbers to individuals identified as potential targets between September and December 2017. Of those, 65 were identifiable as civil society members, including 34 human rights defenders, 22 journalists and media workers, five lawyers, and four academics.

Safir described a surveillance apparatus that combined digital and physical methods. According to his account, targeted individuals were secretly filmed and recorded in detention, offices, cars, cafes, and even bedrooms. He said phone shops were coopted to sell targets devices already infected with spyware, while neighbors of human rights defenders were recruited as informants to file daily reports on their movements.

The whistleblower also described the use of remote control systems at internet cafes. Field agents would identify which cafe a target frequented, he said, giving the DGST access to activity on machines it had already infected. This allowed an operator to track calls, read messages, access photographs, and record audio.

The report says similar tactics were used against Abdelmoumni, who was secretly filmed at home with his fiancée in 2021. Abdelmoumni said he believed the footage was captured through a hidden camera in an air-conditioning unit, based on the angle of the recording. Safir described the episode as a "textbook case" of a DGST surveillance and cleanup operation designed to leave no trace.

Morocco has consistently denied allegations that its authorities used Pegasus to target journalists, activists, and other critics. In statements issued in 2020 and 2022, Moroccan officials challenged Amnesty to provide material evidence supporting its claims. Amnesty said it wrote to Moroccan authorities four weeks before publishing its latest report and invited them to respond but received no reply. Al Jazeera also sought comment from Moroccan officials but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Moroccan media outlets have also pushed back against the report. Le360 cited arguments that the presence of a phone number in Pegasus targeting records does not by itself prove that a device was infected or establish who ordered an alleged attack. The outlet also argued that Amnesty had not provided the conclusive technical and material evidence Moroccan authorities had demanded.

Beyond the four cases documented by Amnesty, other journalists described a broader pattern of pressure and intimidation. Taoufik Bouachrine, one of Morocco's best-known journalists and host of the "Talk on Politics" podcast, was not named in the report but said similar tactics are used across the Arab world to silence journalists and deter investigative reporting, particularly when it concerns abuses of power, financial corruption, and the intertwining of political authority and money.

Bouachrine described two primary methods used against journalists. The first, he said, is fabricating criminal cases, often involving allegations of sexual misconduct in a conservative society, which he said amounts to a journalist's moral execution. The second is a smear campaign run through armies of online trolls and operatives who target journalists and their families.

Bouachrine, 57, was arrested in 2018 on charges of rape and human trafficking and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He has denied the charges, saying his prosecution was tied to his journalism. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found his detention arbitrary and said he had been subjected to judicial harassment. The European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for his release.

The report and the testimony it contains add to a growing body of allegations about the misuse of commercial spyware against journalists and civil society figures worldwide. Amnesty has called on Moroccan authorities to investigate the claims and to end what it describes as a system of surveillance aimed at suppressing dissent. Moroccan officials have not publicly responded to the latest report, and the allegations remain contested.