Morocco’s Surveillance Apparatus Under Scrutiny: International Investigation Exposes the Makhzen’s Pegasus Spy Network Targeting Dissidents and Senior French and Spanish Officials
BY Dr. Hana Saada
ALGIERS – In a new high-profile scandal that underscores the police-state character of the Makhzen regime and exposes its transformation into a source of domestic and regional digital security threats, a new international investigative report titled “The Pegasus Project: Inside Morocco’s Spy Machine” has revealed shocking details and precise technical evidence confirming that Moroccan intelligence services deployed the Zionist spyware Pegasus as part of a comprehensive electronic surveillance apparatus designed to silence dissent at home and infiltrate the devices of senior officials in major European capitals, including Paris and Madrid.
The investigation, coordinated by the Forbidden Stories consortium with technical support from Amnesty International’s Security Lab, was carried out by an international journalistic coalition comprising 39 journalists and 14 leading global media organisations, including Britain’s The Guardian, France’s Le Monde, the Zionist entity’s Haaretz, Spain’s El Confidencial, and Germany’s Die Zeit. The findings are based on confidential documents, classified records, and first-hand testimony from three former Moroccan intelligence operatives who defected from the country’s security services.
Hammouchi’s Surveillance Empire: Far Beyond Pegasus
The investigation reveals that Morocco’s General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DST), headed by Abdellatif Hammouchi, operates an extensive technological and human intelligence apparatus designed not only to dominate domestic society but also to conduct operations abroad.
According to the report, its activities extend well beyond the use of spyware and include:
- Comprehensive cyber surveillance: monitoring and intercepting communications, infiltrating mobile phones and internet networks, with the tacit cooperation of local actors—including Maroc Telecom, which declined to answer journalists’ questions.
- Conventional and field surveillance: installing hidden cameras and sophisticated listening devices, physically tracking targeted individuals, and relying on complex networks of local informants to monitor citizens’ residences and movements.
Testimony from former intelligence officers—most notably a defector identified under the pseudonym “Safir”—indicates that Morocco acquired the Zionist spyware in 2017 through an intermediary company based in the United Arab Emirates, which financed the acquisition before making the software available to Moroccan intelligence services to target “high-value individuals” as part of a systematic punitive and preventive strategy.
Regional Blackmail and the Hacking of Pedro Sánchez’s Phone During the Ceuta Crisis
In what the investigation describes as its most alarming external dimension, it documents a striking chronological correlation between Morocco’s deployment of Pegasus and the emergence of major diplomatic crises.
During the May 2021 mass migrant influx into the occupied city of Ceuta, the mobile phones of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, several cabinet ministers, and senior Civil Guard officials were compromised. According to the investigation, the cyber intrusions were intended to pressure Madrid into revising its long-standing position on the Western Sahara issue.
The report further states that Morocco’s surveillance activities did not stop with Spain—where more than 200 mobile phones belonging to officials and journalists were targeted, with some victims describing the operation as “an act of betrayal and hostility.” The campaign also extended to senior government officials, journalists, and political figures in France, illustrating what the report characterises as Rabat’s increasingly intrusive and adversarial surveillance posture toward its traditional partners.
Character Assassination and Judicial Persecution: Omar Radi as a Case Study
Domestically, the investigation highlights the case of imprisoned Moroccan investigative journalist Omar Radi as a stark illustration of the victims of Morocco’s surveillance apparatus.
According to the report, security agencies combined continuous physical surveillance with the infiltration of Radi’s phone using Pegasus to collect personal data, which was subsequently exploited in smear campaigns and character assassination orchestrated by pro-government tabloid media, paving the way for what the investigation describes as fabricated criminal charges and the imprisonment of government critics.
A German Judicial Rebuff Strips Away the Myth of “State Honour”
Faced with what the investigation presents as mounting evidence, Morocco sought, as on previous occasions, to counter the revelations by filing defamation lawsuits before European courts in an attempt to silence independent media organisations and human rights groups.
However, in February 2026, Germany’s judiciary dealt Rabat what the article describes as a historic legal setback.
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice definitively dismissed Morocco’s lawsuits against the newspapers Die Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung, ruling that neither German nor international law grants foreign states the right to sue media organisations in order to protect their “reputation” or “honour.” The court further held that “a state possesses no personal honour” that would justify restricting publication or curtailing press freedom, thereby thwarting Morocco’s attempt to impose cross-border judicial censorship.
An Obsession with Surveillance Exposes the Regime’s Fragility
The Pegasus Project once again demonstrates that the Makhzen regime lives in a constant state of fear of the truth.
The enormous expenditure of millions of dollars—financed through external support—on Zionist surveillance technologies, together with the mobilisation of thousands of informants to monitor telephones and even private lives, reflects the structural weakness of a regime incapable of confronting arguments with arguments, or ideas with ideas.
Spying on allies in Paris and Madrid, while crushing independent journalists such as Omar Radi at home, does not confer authority upon the state; rather, it serves as conclusive proof that it presides over a rogue police state that blackmails its neighbours and suffocates its own citizens. As Morocco’s politically motivated lawsuits continue to collapse before the independence of the German and broader European judiciary, it becomes increasingly evident that the walls of secrecy constructed by Abdellatif Hammouchi have begun to crumble, and that the misuse of technology to safeguard authoritarian rule will only heighten public awareness of the profound bankruptcy of the regime’s choices.
— 𝐄𝐍𝐃 —
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