Moroccan Journalists Expose Years of Digital and Physical Surveillance Highlighted in New Amnesty Report

Moroccan journalist Omar Radi has spoken out about being targeted with Pegasus spyware amid ongoing allegations of surveillance against journalists, activists, and other critics—claims that Moroccan authorities have consistently denied.

“I was surveilled not because of a specific article. I was investigating land dispossession in Morocco. I then learned I was a Pegasus target,” Omar Radi, a journalist and human rights defender, told Al Jazeera, referring to the mobile surveillance tool developed by Israeli company NSO Group. The findings came to light in June 2020 when Amnesty International Security Lab examined his phone.

Radi, currently based in Germany, stated that he spent two years between 2018 and 2020 noticing warning signs, such as rapid battery drainage, rising device temperature, and slowed network speeds. Physical surveillance, he added, was barely discreet. “They came every day to get a daily report from the parking attendants in my street, the shops I used to go to, and my friends,” he said.

His case is one of four detailed in a new Amnesty International report titled We Start With the Verdict: Inside Morocco’s Surveillance Machine, which was produced alongside 14 media organizations and coordinated by the international network of journalists Forbidden Stories. The other three individuals featured are veteran activist Fouad Abdelmoumni, human rights lawyer Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui, and exiled journalist Hicham Mansouri, who was imprisoned in 2015 on charges of adultery and sexual exploitation—charges Amnesty characterizes as trumped-up.

The report relies on interviews with a whistleblower using the pseudonym Safir, a former employee of Morocco’s General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DGST). Amnesty stated it corroborated key elements of Safir's testimony using independent sources, technical evidence, and interviews with 10 identified surveillance targets, including Omar Radi.

“The Amnesty report connected many dots as to what I was living and feeling while I was under tight surveillance,” Radi noted. “It explains the extraordinary aspect of my police interrogations and my trial, where many of my rights weren’t respected, because even the judicial police and the judges were under monitoring.”

Amnesty identifies the DGST as the organization responsible for deploying Pegasus spyware in Morocco, documenting abuses against activists and journalists from 2017 to 2021.

Morocco Denies Surveillance Allegations

Moroccan authorities have previously rejected Amnesty's accusations regarding the use of Pegasus to target critics. In statements released in 2020 and 2022, officials challenged Amnesty to present material evidence supporting its claims. Amnesty stated it wrote to Moroccan authorities four weeks prior to publishing the latest report to invite a response, but received none. Al Jazeera also reached out to Moroccan officials for comment but received no reply before publication.

Local media have also pushed back against the report. Le360 argued that the mere presence of a phone number in Pegasus targeting logs does not prove a device was successfully infected or clarify who ordered the alleged operation, maintaining that Amnesty failed to provide the conclusive technical evidence demanded by Moroccan authorities.

According to the report, Morocco's Pegasus operations were fully active by October 2017. It highlighted the case of human rights lawyer Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui, whose phone number was entered into the system in September 2017 and selected for targeting weeks before he received a malicious infection link via text message. Amnesty's analysis matched 103 Moroccan phone numbers to potential targets between September and December 2017, of which 65 belonged to civil society members, including 34 human rights defenders, 22 journalists and media workers, five lawyers, and four academics.

Safir described a surveillance system combining digital and physical methods. Targets were allegedly filmed and recorded in secret across detention facilities, offices, cars, cafes, and bedrooms. Phone shops were reportedly co-opted to sell spyware-infected devices, while neighbors of human rights defenders were recruited as informants to track daily movements.

Additionally, Safir detailed the use of remote control systems at internet cafes. Field agents identified cafes visited by targets, allowing the DGST to access infected machines and monitor calls, read messages, view photos, and record audio. Similar tactics were allegedly used against activist Fouad Abdelmoumni, who was secretly filmed alongside his fiancee in 2021 using a hidden camera allegedly placed in an air-conditioning unit.

Journalists Describe Intimidation and Pressure

Taoufik Bouachrine, a prominent Moroccan journalist and host of the Talk on Politics podcast, was not named in the Amnesty report but reported experiencing similar pressures. “In Morocco, as in all Arab countries, inventive methods are used to silence journalists and deter them from investigative journalism,” he told Al Jazeera, citing coverage of the unlawful exercise of power and financial corruption.

Bouachrine pointed to two primary methods: fabricating criminal cases—often involving sexual misconduct allegations designed to inflict moral damage in a conservative society—and running smear campaigns via online trolls. Arrested in 2018 on rape and human trafficking charges, Bouachrine was sentenced to 15 years in prison, which he denied, arguing his prosecution stemmed from his journalism. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention deemed his detention arbitrary, and the European Parliament subsequently called for his release. After serving more than six years, he was released under a royal pardon.

By then, Akhbar Al-Youm, the newspaper he founded, had already closed after authorities allegedly cut off its advertising revenue. “This is another method of destroying investigative journalism,” Bouachrine stated, “turning off the advertising tap and leaving a newspaper to die slowly.”