Moroccan journalists recount years of surveillance amid new Amnesty claim

Amnesty cites a whistleblower’s account of how Morocco allegedly uses surveillance to silence journalists.

Moroccan journalist Omar Radi has spoken about being targeted with Pegasus spyware, amid allegations of surveillance against journalists, activists and other critics that authorities have denied [File: Abdeljalil Bounhar/AP Photo]

Rabat, Morocco – “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 emerged in June 2020, when Amnesty International Security Lab examined his phone. Radi, now based in Germany, said he had spent two years, from 2018 to 2020, noticing signs including his phone’s battery draining quickly, its temperature rising and the network slowing down.

The physical surveillance, he said, 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. “I would sometimes turn around and walk towards the people following me to take photographs, but they ran quickly and hid their faces.”

His case is among four detailed in a new Amnesty International report, We Start With the Verdict: Inside Morocco’s Surveillance Machine, produced with 14 media organisations and coordinated by the international network of journalists Forbidden Stories.

The other three are Fouad Abdelmoumni, a veteran activist; Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui, a human rights lawyer; and Hicham Mansouri, a journalist in exile who had been imprisoned in 2015 on charges of adultery and sexual exploitation, which Amnesty describes as trumped-up.

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

“The Amnesty report connected many dots as to what I was living and feeling while I was under tight surveillance,” Radi said.

“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,” he added.

Amnesty identifies the DGST as the agency behind the deployment of Pegasus spyware in Morocco and documents what it describes as abuses of the spyware against activists and journalists between 2017 and 2021.

Morocco denies surveillance

Morocco has previously rejected Amnesty’s allegations that its authorities used Pegasus to target journalists, activists and other critics.

In statements issued in 2020 and 2022, Moroccan authorities 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 response.

Al Jazeera also sought comment from Moroccan officials but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Moroccan media have also challenged the latest 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.

The report says Morocco’s Pegasus operations were fully active by October 2017, pointing to the case of human rights lawyer El Bouchattaoui, whose number was entered into the system in September 2017 and selected for targeting weeks before he received an infection link by 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.

According to Amnesty, Safir described a surveillance apparatus that combined digital and physical methods. Targeted individuals were secretly filmed and recorded in detention, offices, cars, cafes and even bedrooms, he said.

Phone shops, he added, were coopted to sell targets devices infected with spyware. Neighbours of human rights defenders, he said, were recruited as informants to file daily reports on their movements.

Safir also described the use of remote control systems (RCS) at internet cafes. Field agents would identify which cafe a target was visiting, he said, giving the DGST access to activity on machines it had already infected and allowing an operator to track calls, read messages, access photographs and record audio.

The report says similar tactics were used against activist Abdelmoumni, who was secretly filmed at home with his fiancee in 2021. Abdelmoumni said he believed the footage was captured through a hidden camera in an air-conditioning unit, based on the recording’s angle.

Safir described the episode as a “textbook case” of a DGST surveillance and cleanup operation designed to leave no trace.

Journalists describe pressure and intimidation

Taoufik Bouachrine, one of Morocco’s best-known journalists and host of the Talk on Politics podcast, was not named in Amnesty’s report but described a similar pattern.

“In Morocco, as in all Arab countries, inventive methods are used to silence journalists and deter them from investigative journalism, particularly when it concerns the unlawful exercise of power, financial corruption, and the intertwining of political authority and money,” he told Al Jazeera.

The first method, he said, is fabricating criminal cases against journalists, “often involving allegations of sexual misconduct in a conservative society that amount to a journalist’s moral execution”.

The second, he said, 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 Bouachrine’s detention arbitrary and said he had been subjected to judicial harassment. The European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for his release, along with other journalists tried on similar charges.

He served more than six years before being released under a royal pardon. By then, Akhbar Al-Youm, the newspaper he founded, had already closed. Bouachrine said authorities had cut off its advertising revenue.

“This is another method of destroying investigative journalism,” he added, “turning off the advertising tap and leaving a newspaper to die slowly.”

国际特赦组织援引一名举报人的证词，称摩洛哥涉嫌利用监视手段来压制记者。

摩洛哥记者奥马尔·拉迪 (Omar Radi) 表示自己成为“飞马”间谍软件的攻击目标。此前，有关当局监视记者、活动人士和其他批评人士的指控遭到否认。[图片：Abdeljalil Bounhar/AP Photo]

摩洛哥拉巴特——“我被监视并非因为写了某篇文章。我当时正在调查摩洛哥的土地征用问题。后来我才知道，我成了‘飞马’（Pegasus）的目标，”记者兼人权捍卫者奥马尔·拉迪（Omar Radi）告诉半岛电视台，他指的是以色列公司NSO集团开发的移动监控工具。

2020年6月，国际特赦组织安全实验室对他的手机进行了检查，结果显示存在问题。现居德国的拉迪表示，从2018年到2020年的两年间，他注意到手机出现了一些异常迹象，包括电池电量消耗过快、机身温度升高以及网络速度变慢。

他说，这种人身监视几乎没有任何隐蔽性。

他说：“他们每天都来我家附近的停车管理员、我常去的商店以及我的朋友们那里收集每日报告。我有时会转身走向那些跟踪我的人，想拍些照片，但他们很快就跑开了，并遮住了脸。”

他的案例是国际特赦组织最新报告《我们从判决开始：摩洛哥的监控机器内幕》中详细介绍的四个案例之一，该报告由 14 家媒体机构联合制作，并由国际记者网络“禁忌故事”协调。

其他三人分别是资深活动家福阿德·阿卜杜勒穆姆尼；人权律师阿卜杜勒萨达克·埃尔·布沙塔维；以及流亡记者希沙姆·曼苏里，他于 2015 年因通奸和性剥削指控而被监禁，大赦国际称这些指控是捏造的。

该报告引用了对一位化名为萨菲尔的举报人的采访，萨菲尔曾是摩洛哥领土监视总局（DGST）的雇员。大赦国际表示，他们通过独立消息来源、技术证据以及对包括拉迪在内的10名被认定为监视目标的人员的采访，证实了萨菲尔证词的关键部分。

“大赦国际的报告将我在严密监视下所经历的一切和感受串联了起来，”拉迪说。

“这解释了我接受警方讯问和审判时遇到的种种非同寻常的情况，我的许多权利都没有得到尊重，因为就连司法警察和法官都受到监视，”他补充道。

大赦国际认定摩洛哥电信安全总局（DGST）是部署“飞马”间谍软件的幕后机构，并记录了 2017 年至 2021 年间针对活动人士和记者滥用该间谍软件的情况。

摩洛哥否认监视行为

摩洛哥此前否认了国际特赦组织关于其当局利用“飞马计划”打击记者、活动人士和其他批评人士的指控。

摩洛哥当局在 2020 年和 2022 年发表的声明中，要求大赦国际提供支持其主张的实质性证据。

国际特赦组织表示，在发布最新报告前四周，他们曾致函摩洛哥当局，邀请他们作出回应，但没有收到任何回应。

半岛电视台也曾向摩洛哥官员寻求置评，但截至发稿时尚未收到回复。

摩洛哥媒体也对这份最新报告提出了质疑。Le360援引论点指出，在Pegasus攻击记录中发现某个电话号码本身并不能证明设备已被感染，也不能确定是谁下令发动了所谓的攻击。

该媒体还指出，大赦国际没有提供摩洛哥当局要求的确凿技术和物证。

报告称，摩洛哥的“飞马计划”行动在 2017 年 10 月全面展开，并以人权律师埃尔·布沙塔维为例，他的号码于 2017 年 9 月被录入系统，并在收到感染链接短信的几周前被选为目标。

国际特赦组织表示，其对“飞马计划”记录的分析发现，在2017年9月至12月期间，有103个摩洛哥电话号码与被认定为潜在目标的个人相符。其中，65人被确认为公民社会成员，包括34名人权捍卫者、22名记者和媒体工作者、5名律师和4名学者。

据大赦国际称，萨菲尔描述了一种结合了数字和物理手段的监视系统。他说，目标人物在拘留所、办公室、汽车、咖啡馆甚至卧室都会被秘密拍摄和录音。

他还补充说，手机店被收买，向目标人物出售感染了间谍软件的设备。他说，人权捍卫者的邻居被招募为线人，每天汇报他们的行踪。

萨菲尔还描述了远程控制系统（RCS）在网吧中的应用。他说，外勤人员会识别目标人物光顾的网吧，从而使电信总局能够访问已被感染电脑上的活动，并允许操作人员追踪通话、读取短信、访问照片和录制音频。

报告称，类似的手段也曾被用于针对活动人士阿卜杜勒穆姆尼的行动中。2021年，阿卜杜勒穆姆尼在家中与未婚妻的画面被秘密拍摄。阿卜杜勒穆姆尼表示，根据录像的角度判断，他认为这段视频是通过空调机组中的隐藏摄像头拍摄的。

萨菲尔将该事件描述为 DGST 监视和清理行动的“教科书式案例”，旨在不留任何痕迹。

记者们描述了压力和恐吓

摩洛哥最知名的记者之一、政治谈话播客节目主持人陶菲克·布阿什林虽然没有在国际特赦组织的报告中被点名，但他描述了类似的模式。

“在摩洛哥，就像在所有阿拉伯国家一样，人们会使用各种巧妙的手段来压制记者，阻止他们进行调查性报道，尤其是在涉及非法行使权力、金融腐败以及政治权力与金钱的勾结时，”他告诉半岛电视台。

他说，第一种方法是捏造针对记者的刑事案件，“在保守的社会中，这通常涉及对记者的性行为不端指控，相当于对记者进行道德处决”。

他说，第二种攻击是通过成群的网络喷子和特工发起的抹黑运动，目标是记者及其家人。

现年57岁的布阿克林于2018年因强奸和人口贩卖罪被捕，并被判处15年监禁。他否认了这些指控，称对他的起诉与他的新闻工作有关。

联合国任意拘留问题工作组认定布阿什林的拘留属于任意拘留，并表示他遭受了司法骚扰。欧洲议会通过一项决议，呼吁释放他以及其他因类似指控受审的记者。

他服刑六年多后获得皇家特赦获释。那时，他创办的《今日新闻报》已经停刊。布阿什林说，当局切断了该报的广告收入。

“这是摧毁调查性新闻的另一种方法，”他补充道，“切断广告渠道，让报纸慢慢消亡。”