Written By | International News Agencies
The numbers come from Amnesty's analysis of 103 Moroccan phone numbers entered into the Pegasus system between September and December 2017
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RABAT, Morocco
A new Amnesty International investigation, published on October 1 and still reverberating this week, accuses Morocco's domestic intelligence service of running an expansive apparatus that combines spyware with older, analog methods to monitor and silence critics. The report draws on a former intelligence employee, leaked documents and journalistic investigations, and it adds institutional detail to years of allegations that Rabat has denied. The political significance lies in who appears on the target list: alongside human rights defenders and reporters are 25 political representatives or officials and five diplomats or representatives of international organizations, according to Amnesty's analysis of one set of phone numbers.
What the report says
The report is titled "We Start with the Verdict: Inside Morocco's Surveillance Machine," according to Amnesty International USA's press release. It was produced with 14 media organizations in a collaboration coordinated by Forbidden Stories. Its central allegation is that the Direction Générale de la Surveillance du Territoire (DGST), Morocco's domestic intelligence agency, deployed the Pegasus spyware and a wider toolkit against critics.
The principal new source is a whistleblower who uses the pseudonym "Safir," described as a former DGST employee who provided first-hand operational details across several interviews. Africanews, summarizing the findings, reported that the apparatus involves spyware attacks and phone interception, hidden recording devices in detention facilities, offices, cars and bedrooms, the systematic recording of phone calls, pre-infected mobile phones sold with malware, and the tracking of people's movements. Amnesty's release adds further methods: infection of devices at airports and through secondhand vendors, infection at internet cafés, microphone implantation, and network injection through the operator Maroc Telecom.
The numbers come from Amnesty's analysis of 103 Moroccan phone numbers entered into the Pegasus system between September and December 2017. By Amnesty's classification, those numbers belonged to 34 human rights defenders, 22 journalists and media workers, five lawyers, four academics, 25 political representatives or officials, five diplomats or representatives of international organizations, and eight others, including business people and religious figures. The categories sum to 103. Amnesty dates the first phone number entered into the system to September 19, 2017, and the first confirmed spyware targeting to October 23, 2017, and it documents Pegasus deployment across 2017 to 2021.
The report also names technology suppliers. Amnesty identified NSO Group of Israel, Hacking Team, now Memento Labs, of Italy, and the British-German network Gamma Group and FinFisher. Africanews separately reported that the report says the DGST obtained technology from Israeli, American and European firms, and that French and Spanish politicians were among the people targeted. Those details come from Amnesty's account and have not been independently confirmed in the sources reviewed here.
The people behind the numbers
Several of the individuals named are familiar to followers of Moroccan press freedom. The journalist Omar Radi, who faced imprisonment, is among those Amnesty cites; the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said he had his apartment bugged with hidden microphones. The investigative journalist Hicham Mansouri, who was imprisoned in 2015 and now lives in exile in France, reported self-censorship because of persistent monitoring, according to CPJ. The human rights activist Fouad Abdelmoumni was covertly filmed at home, and the human rights lawyer Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui was a Pegasus target from September 2017, Amnesty states.
CPJ's regional director, Sara Qudah, said in a statement that "Moroccan authorities must immediately end the unlawful surveillance of journalists." CPJ also urged Rabat to hold those responsible accountable and to guarantee that reporters can work free from surveillance and intimidation. Amnesty, for its part, said that personal data gathered on activists and human rights defenders is used to fuel public smear campaigns against them. Its secretary general, Agnès Callamard, accused Morocco of embracing what she called techno-authoritarian practices, according to the organization's release.
Rabat's response
Morocco has not engaged with the new report in the sources reviewed. CPJ said the Ministry of Interior did not respond to its request for comment, and both CPJ and Africanews noted that the government has repeatedly denied using spyware against its citizens. Earlier coverage indicates that Morocco has gone on the offensive against such claims before: headlines from The New Arab and Al-Araby report that Morocco filed defamation suits in France over earlier Pegasus allegations, and Qantara reported that Morocco sued Amnesty International and a French NGO. This briefing did not review those articles in full, so readers should consult them directly for specifics on the cases and their outcomes.
That history helps explain why the whistleblower element is significant. Earlier allegations rested heavily on forensic analysis of devices and on leaked lists of phone numbers, which a government can dismiss as incomplete or uncorroborated. A former insider describing how the agency works is harder to rebut by pointing to technical gaps, though Amnesty's claims will still need to be tested. A fair reading is that the report is a serious set of allegations from a credible organization, backed by named sources and documents, and that the government's denial has not yet been tested against the new evidence.
Analysis: why this matters beyond Morocco
The first implication is diplomatic. The report says French and Spanish politicians were among those surveilled, and it counts diplomats among the 103 numbers. Morocco is a close partner of both countries on migration, security and trade, so any confirmation that their officials were monitored would put pressure on those governments to respond, even if only in private. The sources reviewed do not report any official reaction from Paris or Madrid, and it would be premature to predict one.
The second is the supply chain. Amnesty has called on states to halt spyware exports to Morocco until human rights safeguards are established. That recommendation targets governments in Israel, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany and elsewhere, whose companies appear in the report. Whether export controls are tightened will depend on political will in those capitals, and the record of such restrictions suggests caution about quick action.
The third is domestic. The figure of 25 political representatives or officials among the 103 targets suggests that the monitoring extended beyond civil society into the political class. Amnesty's request for an independent investigation into the DGST is unlikely to be accepted by an agency accused of being the subject of that investigation, and Morocco's institutions have not, in the reporting reviewed, signaled willingness to open one. For journalists, the practical effect is described by Mansouri's account of self-censorship: even the possibility of being watched changes what gets written.
A caveat on interpretation is warranted. The phone-number analysis covers a window of just four months in 2017, and the report's most specific figures refer to that period rather than to the present. The broader claims about ongoing practice rest on the whistleblower's testimony, leaked documents and the continuing pattern Amnesty describes between 2017 and 2021. Readers should distinguish between what has been documented for particular dates and what is asserted about current practice.
What to watch next
Several developments will determine whether the report has lasting political consequences. Rabat may respond with a formal rebuttal or legal action, as it has before. European governments and parliaments may seek explanations if the claims about French and Spanish politicians gain traction. Spyware vendors and their home governments may face questions about exports. Journalists named in the report may pursue legal cases. And the Moroccan press, operating in the environment the report describes, will show through its coverage how much room remains for scrutiny of the intelligence services.
The deeper question is institutional. The report describes a surveillance system that, if accurate, operates with little visible oversight, and the response from Moroccan authorities will indicate whether the state is prepared to accept any. For now, the government's silence leaves the allegations standing and the debate in the hands of those who made them.
