Moroccan Journalists Detail Years of Alleged Surveillance as Amnesty International Exposes "Surveillance Machine"

A new Amnesty International report has shed fresh light on what it describes as a systematic surveillance apparatus targeting journalists, activists, and human rights defenders in Morocco, drawing on the testimony of a whistleblower and the accounts of those who say they were monitored for years.

The report, titled "We Start With the Verdict: Inside Morocco's Surveillance Machine," was produced in collaboration with 14 media organizations and coordinated by Forbidden Stories, an international network of journalists dedicated to continuing the work of reporters who have been killed, threatened, or imprisoned. It names four individuals whose cases are documented in detail: journalist Omar Radi, veteran activist Fouad Abdelmoumni, human rights lawyer Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui, and Hicham Mansouri, a journalist living in exile.

At the center of the investigation is a whistleblower using the pseudonym Safir, described as a former employee of Morocco's General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance, known by its French acronym DGST. According to Amnesty, key portions of Safir's account were corroborated through independent sources, technical evidence, and interviews with 10 people identified as surveillance targets, including Radi.

Radi, who now resides in Germany, told Al Jazeera that the surveillance he experienced was not tied to any single article. Instead, he said, it coincided with his investigative work into land dispossession in Morocco. He learned he had been targeted with Pegasus, the mobile spyware developed by Israeli firm NSO Group, after Amnesty's Security Lab examined his phone in June 2020. Between 2018 and 2020, Radi noticed warning signs: his phone's battery drained rapidly, the device grew unusually hot, and his network connection slowed.

The physical surveillance, he said, was far from subtle. "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," Radi recalled. He described occasionally turning to confront his followers and attempt to photograph them, only for them to flee and conceal their faces.

Amnesty identifies the DGST as the agency responsible for deploying Pegasus in Morocco and documents what it characterizes as abuses of the spyware against activists and journalists between 2017 and 2021. According to the report, Morocco's Pegasus operations were fully operational by October 2017. The case of El Bouchattaoui is cited as an early example: his phone number was entered into the system in September 2017 and selected for targeting weeks before he received an infection link via text message.

The report states that an 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 members of civil society, including 34 human rights defenders, 22 journalists and media workers, five lawyers, and four academics. The figures suggest a broad targeting of those engaged in public interest work rather than a narrow focus on specific criminal investigations.

Radi said the Amnesty report helped him make sense of his experiences. "The Amnesty report connected many dots as to what I was living and feeling while I was under tight surveillance," he said. He added that it explained the unusual nature of his police interrogations and trial, where he believed his rights were not respected because even judicial police and judges were themselves under monitoring.

Morocco has consistently denied allegations that its authorities used Pegasus to target journalists, activists, and other critics. In statements issued in 2020 and 2022, Moroccan officials challenged Amnesty to provide material evidence supporting its claims. Amnesty said it wrote to Moroccan authorities four weeks before publishing the latest report and invited them to respond, but received no reply. Al Jazeera also sought comment from Moroccan officials but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Moroccan media outlets have also pushed back against the report. Le360 cited arguments that the mere 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 further argued that Amnesty had not provided the conclusive technical and material evidence that Moroccan authorities had demanded.

According to Amnesty, Safir described a surveillance apparatus that blended digital and physical methods. Targets were secretly filmed and recorded in a range of locations, including detention facilities, offices, cars, cafes, and even bedrooms. Phone shops, Safir said, were co-opted to sell targets devices already infected with spyware. Neighbors of human rights defenders were recruited as informants to file daily reports on their movements.

Safir also described the use of remote control systems at internet cafes. Field agents would identify which cafe a target frequented, he said, giving the DGST access to activity on machines it had already infected. This allowed an operator to track calls, read messages, access photographs, and record audio. The report says similar tactics were used against 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 angle of the recording. Safir described the episode as a "textbook case" of a DGST surveillance and cleanup operation designed to leave no trace.

The report's findings also resonate with the experiences of other Moroccan journalists who were not named in the investigation. Taoufik Bouachrine, one of Morocco's best-known journalists and host of the "Talk on Politics" podcast, described a similar pattern of pressure and intimidation. "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.

Bouachrine outlined two primary methods used against journalists. The first, he said, is fabricating criminal cases, "often involving allegations of sexual misconduct in a conservative society that amount to a journalist's moral execution." The second 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 his detention arbitrary and said he had been subjected to judicial harassment. The European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for his release.

The Amnesty report arrives amid longstanding concerns about press freedom in Morocco and the use of commercial spyware against civil society. The involvement of Forbidden Stories and more than a dozen media partners reflects a collaborative approach to investigating surveillance technologies that individual outlets might struggle to document alone. For Radi, the report represents more than a technical confirmation of what he long suspected. It offers a framework for understanding a period of his life defined by uncertainty, intrusion, and legal jeopardy.