For the fourth time since 2014, the Kingdom of Morocco has brought Spanish journalist Ignacio Cembrero to justice. This Maghreb specialist, former editor of the daily The country and current collaborator of the information site The confidentialis to be tried in a Madrid trial court on Friday January 13 for “act of bragging”. Rabat accuses him of having lied by declaring that he was spied on by Morocco using the powerful spyware Pegasus, marketed by the Israeli company NSO Group.
This is not the first complaint that Rabat has filed in the context of the “Project Pegasus” revelations when, in 2021, The world and sixteen other newsrooms, coordinated by Forbidden Stories, had revealed the extent of the surveillance carried out by different states against political opponents, journalists, lawyers or human rights activists, using Pegasus.
Identified among the clients of the spyware, Morocco had been suspected of being behind many targets in France, including activists for the independence of Western Sahara, but also French diplomats or senior politicians. Mr. Cembrero’s phone was also on the list.
“I am a victim of legal harassment”
In the fall of 2021, several media, including The worldRadio France, Mediapart, Humanity and Amnesty International had been targeted by defamation complaints filed by the Kingdom of Morocco. But in France, the Paris court declared these inadmissible. Vis-à-vis Mr. Cembrero, Rabat has changed its strategy. He used a charge inherited from the Middle Ages which remains in the Spanish penal code and which, « century XIIIe century, aimed to silence those who claim rights that do not correspond to them.recalls the daily The country.
The lawyer representing the Cherifian kingdom, Ernesto Díaz-Bastién, former lawyer for the Syrian arms trafficker Monzer Al Kassar or General Augusto Pinochet, asks the journalist to retract and the judge in charge of the case to recognize that he “has not been the victim of any act of espionage for which the kingdom of Morocco is responsible or has committed against him”.
For Ignacio Cembrero, however, he does not ” no doubt “ that it was Morocco that spied on him using Pegasus. ” I work on Morocco where I have very good sources, I write things that displease and I have been the victim of judicial harassment for a long time. And, above all, an article from June 2021 of the site Morocco Diplomaticclose to power, referred to two private messages that I had exchanged by WhatsApp with members of the Spanish government that I had not spoken to anyone elsehe explains. I had already said to myself at the time that I was being spied on”.
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