A complaint was filed in Paris on Monday by the French news site Mediapart, after reports that the phones of two of its journalists were spied on by a Moroccan service, using Israeli software Pegasus, a indicated the online media in an article.
“The cell phone numbers of Lénaïg Bredoux and Edwy Plenel (co-founder of the site) are among the ten thousand that the Moroccan secret services have targeted using spyware provided by the Israeli company NSO”, the media confirmed in line, after the publication of these revelations in several titles,
whose The world, the Guardian and the Washington post.
“Silence” journalists
“For several months, the repressive apparatus of the Shereefian kingdom thus violated the private privacy of two journalists, undermined the profession of information and the freedom of the press, stolen and exploited personal and professional data. No other phone from a member of the Mediapart team has been spied on, ”the online newspaper said.
In its article, the investigative media explains, with supporting details, how this spying of phones coincided with “the repression of independent journalism in Morocco”, and in particular against the investigative journalist Omar Radi. For Mediapart, the goal was clearly to seek to “silence independent journalists in Morocco, by seeking to know how we were investigating in this area”.
A reaction from the French authorities
This is why the site indicates that it has decided to file a complaint on Monday on behalf of its two journalists, with the public prosecutor in Paris, so that justice can “conduct an independent investigation into this large-scale espionage organized in France by Morocco ”.
“Beyond the legal consequences, it goes without saying that this attack on fundamental freedoms, carried out by a foreign power against an independent newspaper, requires a firm reaction from the French authorities which goes beyond a conviction of principle. We are waiting for it, ”adds the investigative media.