London -The number of people in the lawsuit before the American judiciary against the Israeli company producing the Pegasus program has increased , with the joining of a group of Moroccans as a civil party. The Pegasus file raises a lot of tension in foreign relations, including Morocco's relations with France.
At the end of October and the beginning of November of 2019, the WhatsApp Authority, which is owned by the Meta company and runs Facebook, told more than a hundred journalists and human rights activists in the world that their phones had been hacked with the Pegasus program. Among the 11 percent of Moroccans are those residing in Morocco and abroad. During July 2021, Forbidden Stories revealed hundreds of Moroccan names among the 50,000 phones that were spied on around the world. Among the phone numbers was the number of King Mohammed VI, according to Le Monde newspaper, and some members of the royal family, such as Prince Hisham and the Commander of the Royal Gendarmerie.
Moroccan activists resorted to the Moroccan judiciary, and wrote to the bodies concerned with the protection of personal data, but they did not receive any response. In recent days, an agreement was reached between a group of Moroccan activists and human rights activists to resort to the American judiciary, and the matter relates to each of the political refugee journalist Hisham Al-Mansouri and the human rights activist Fouad Abdel Momani, and Kholoud on behalf of the detained journalist Suleiman Al-Raysouni, and Ali Reda Zayan on behalf of the former Minister of Human Rights Captain Muhammad The arrested Zayan, human rights activist and journalist Abd al-Latif al-Hammoushi, then the former director of the Journal magazine, Abu Bakr al-Jami, and university professor and journalist Omar Broksi.
The Moroccans join a previous initiative led by journalists from El Faro newspaper from El Salvador, who filed a lawsuit last January against the company that produced the program before the US judiciary to investigate what they described as “criminal practices,” accusing it of endangering their lives because it sold the program to some parties to spy on journalists and not on them. Organized crime or terrorism.
The director of “Alvaro” had published a letter in the Washington Post newspaper on January 12, in which he talked about the reasons that prompted the journalists to resort to the American judiciary, as he says that the lives of those who were spied on had worsened a lot, and therefore those who committed these acts should not be tolerated. . Journalists from El Salvador benefited from a decision issued by the Supreme Court at the beginning of last January that allows US companies, especially Meta, which owns WhatsApp, to continue to prosecute NSO before US courts. The United States is helping all activists in the world to go to justice after it considered Pegasus a regime that threatens international relations and even the international order.
Sources of Moroccan activists who joined the international lawsuit say, “The lawsuit is not against the Moroccan state, but rather against the NSO company. We are human rights activists and journalists. Why did the Israeli police authorize the violation of our sanctities and privacy? It must explain to the American judiciary to those who sold the program, especially since it claims that it It is sold on condition that it is used against terrorism and organized crime.” Journalists and politicians from some countries, including Spain, may join the international lawsuit against the Israeli company NSO in the coming weeks.
Aswat in Morocco had called on the Moroccan state to open an investigation, including the well-known YouTuber Hamid El Mahdaoui, who questioned the Moroccan state's reluctance to open an investigation into the exposure of Moroccans to espionage, including King Mohammed VI himself.
Morocco deals with a kind of absolute secrecy with espionage files, and it was subjected to major espionage in 2014 in the file of what is known as the “Pirate Coleman.” The judiciary did not announce an investigation, nor did Parliament address the issue. In the case of Pegasus, for example, the judiciary of countries such as France and Spain opened investigations, and parliamentary committees were formed for political investigation, which did not happen in Morocco. Morocco is a paradox, on the one hand, countries like France allude to its spying on it with Pegasus, and on the other hand, its citizens resort to international justice as victims.