Spanish Judicial Authorities Reopen the Moroccan “Pegasus” Scandal

The Spanish judge who closed the investigation into the scandal of using the “Pegasus” spyware against his country’s government members, in which the Moroccan Makhzen regime was strongly implicated, decided to relaunch his investigations after obtaining documents from the French judicial authorities.

The judge’s decision came “after obtaining the EU investigation decision,” which is a mechanism for cooperation between European Union member states in criminal investigations issued by the French judicial authorities,” according to what was announced by the Spanish Court of the National Audience in a press release, published on Tuesday.

According to the statement circulated by the Spanish press, in this context, the Spanish judge received documents from the investigation opened in France in 2021, on the hacking of the phones of French journalists, lawyers, public figures, ministers and French MPs through the use of “Pegasus” spyware.

He therefore considered that “the comparison between the technical elements collected in the French investigation with those obtained in Spain enables investigations to be advanced (…) to trace the source of the piracy crime,” the court explained.

The Spanish investigation was opened in 2022 when it was discovered that the phones of the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, but also the phones of his government ministers, such as the Ministers of Defence, Interior and Agriculture, had been spied on using the “Pegasus” spyware.

But a little more than a year later, faced with “the absolute absence of judicial cooperation from the zionist entity which did not respond to the letter rogatory” requesting to question the boss of the company NSO, which developed and marketed Pegasus, the judge had decided to “provisionally classify” his investigation.

Since then, an investigation committee of the European Parliament was established in March 2023, and delivered its conclusions last June, confirming the involvement of the Moroccan Makhzen in acts of espionage and hacking of mobile phones of the Spanish Foreign Minister and some of his government ministers, represented by the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska.

The report, which was approved by a majority of 30 votes, 3 against and 4 abstentions, confirmed that data was extracted from mobile phones on May 19, 2021, at the height of the diplomatic crisis between Madrid and Rabat over the issue of Western Sahara, which confirms suspicions about blackmail operations, which the Moroccan regime committed against the Spanish government regarding this issue.

In November 2022, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) decided to expel the Moroccan employee, Wafa Bernichi, for her involvement with the Moroccan intelligence services in spying on the employees of the United Nations organization, using the “Pegasus” spyware.

The Moroccan employee was fired from her position as director of an administrative unit at UNESCO, following an internal investigation that revealed that she leaked confidential information to Moroccan intelligence, about the organization’s Expression and Media Development Department funding a secret investigation into Morocco’s direct involvement in using “Pegasus” to spy on officials of the United Nations organization.

According to media sources, the internal investigation of UNESCO, based in Paris, showed that this Moroccan employee downloaded and sent important quantities of the organization’s confidential documents.