Moroccan Journalists Detail Surveillance Ordeal as Amnesty Report Alleges State Spyware Campaign

A new Amnesty International investigation has drawn fresh attention to allegations that Moroccan authorities deployed sophisticated surveillance tools against journalists, human rights lawyers and activists, with several of those targeted now speaking publicly about the personal toll of years spent under watch.

The report, titled "We Start With the Verdict: Inside Morocco's Surveillance Machine," was produced in collaboration with 14 media organisations and coordinated by Forbidden Stories, an international journalism network that continues investigations into stories that other outlets are unable to pursue. It centres on the testimony of a whistleblower operating under the pseudonym Safir, described as a former employee of Morocco's General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DGST), the country's domestic intelligence agency.

According to Amnesty, the report focuses on four individuals: journalist Omar Radi, veteran activist Fouad Abdelmoumni, human rights lawyer Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui, and journalist Hicham Mansouri, who has lived in exile since being imprisoned in 2015 on charges of adultery and sexual exploitation. Amnesty has characterised those charges as fabricated, part of what it describes as a broader pattern of using criminal proceedings to punish critical journalism.

Radi, who now lives in Germany, told Al Jazeera that the surveillance he experienced was not tied to any single piece of reporting. He said he had been investigating land dispossession in Morocco when he learned that his phone had been targeted with Pegasus, the mobile spyware developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group. The finding was made in June 2020 when the Amnesty International Security Lab examined his device.

Looking back, Radi said warning signs had accumulated over roughly two years, between 2018 and 2020. His phone's battery drained unusually fast, the device grew hot, and his network connection slowed. But the physical surveillance, he said, was anything but subtle. He described men visiting his street daily to collect reports from parking attendants, shopkeepers and friends, noting that when he occasionally turned around and walked toward those following him to photograph them, they fled and covered their faces.

Amnesty's report identifies the DGST as the agency responsible for deploying Pegasus in Morocco and documents what it describes as abuses against activists and journalists between 2017 and 2021. The organisation said it corroborated the whistleblower's key claims using independent sources, technical evidence and interviews with 10 people identified as surveillance targets, including Radi. Writing to Moroccan authorities four weeks before publication with an invitation to respond, Amnesty said it received no reply. Al Jazeera also requested comment from Moroccan officials and had not received a response at the time of publication.

Morocco has repeatedly rejected previous Amnesty allegations that its security services used Pegasus against journalists, activists and other critics. In statements issued in 2020 and 2022, Moroccan authorities pressed the organisation to produce material evidence backing its claims. Domestic outlets have also pushed back on the latest report. Le360 argued that the mere appearance of a phone number in Pegasus targeting records does not prove a device was actually infected or establish who ordered an alleged attack, and that Amnesty had failed to supply the conclusive technical evidence authorities had demanded.

The report counters that Morocco's Pegasus operations were fully operational by October 2017. It cites the case of El Bouchattaoui, whose number was entered into the system in September 2017 and reportedly selected for targeting weeks before he received an infection link via text message. Amnesty said its analysis of the records matched 103 Moroccan phone numbers to individuals identified as potential targets between September and December 2017. Of those, 65 could be linked to civil society, including 34 human rights defenders, 22 journalists and media workers, five lawyers and four academics.

Beyond digital infiltration, Safir described an apparatus blending physical and electronic methods. Targets were secretly filmed and recorded in detention, at offices, in cars, in cafes, and even in their bedrooms, according to the account. Phone shops were co-opted to sell devices pre-infected with spyware to targeted individuals, while neighbours of human rights defenders were recruited as informants filing daily reports on their movements, the whistleblower said.

Safir also described the use of remote control systems (RCS) at internet cafes. Field agents would determine which cafe a target frequented, he said, giving the DGST access to machines it had already compromised and allowing an operator to track calls, read messages, view photographs and record audio. The report links similar tactics to activist Abdelmoumni, who was secretly filmed at home with his fiancee in 2021. Basing his conclusion on the angle of the footage, Abdelmoumni believes a hidden camera was concealed in an air-conditioning unit. Safir described the episode as a textbook surveillance and cleanup operation designed to leave no trace.

Radi said the Amnesty report helped connect events he had long struggled to understand. He described it as an explanation for the unusual nature of his police interrogations and trial, where he said many of his rights were disregarded. In his account, the monitoring extended beyond him, with even judicial police and judges under observation.

The issue also extends beyond those named in the report. Taoufik Bouachrine, one of Morocco's most prominent journalists and host of the Talk on Politics podcast, described a parallel pattern of pressure. He told Al Jazeera that inventive methods are used across the Arab world to silence journalists and deter investigative reporting, especially when it touches on the unlawful exercise of power, financial corruption, or the entanglement of political authority with money. The first method, he said, involves fabricating criminal cases, often built on sexual misconduct allegations that, in a conservative society, amount to a journalist's moral execution. The second is a smear campaign waged through networks of online trolls and operatives targeting journalists and their families.

Bouachrine, 57, was arrested in 2018 on rape and human trafficking charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He has denied the allegations and maintains his prosecution was driven by his journalism. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that his detention was arbitrary and that he had faced judicial harassment, while the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for his release.

Taken together, the report and the testimony of those targeted raise pressing questions about the reach of surveillance technology in Morocco and the difficulty of proving digital attacks in court. They also highlight the risks faced by journalists investigating abuses of power, and the widening gap between the accounts of those who say they were watched and the official denials that have followed each round of allegations.