Morocco wants the Spanish justice to exonerate it from espionage in the 'Pegasus case'

A woman in front of the Israeli company NSO Group, creator of Pegasus. JACK GUEZ (AFP)

Morocco wants to obtain from the Spanish Justice what until now it has not obtained from the French: the exoneration of any responsibility in the massive espionage with the Israeli Pegasus program.

On January 13, the trial for the civil lawsuit that the Kingdom of Morocco has filed against the Spanish journalist Ignacio Cembrero is scheduled to take place in the Court of First Instance number 72 of Madrid.

In this process, the Moroccan government is not limited to claiming that the editor, an expert on the Maghreb, demonstrate that the secret services of the neighboring country are responsible "for the alleged espionage of which he would have been a victim" or, if he cannot do so, he retracts "amending and acknowledging his mistake".

He also wants the judge to issue a sentence in which he categorically affirms that Cembrero has not been "the victim of any act of espionage

for which the Kingdom of Morocco is responsible or has committed against him."

The petition is unusual because the judge has not investigated the existence of the alleged espionage, much less its authorship, since that is the responsibility of criminal and not civil courts.

In July 2021, the international consortium of journalists Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International (AI) uncovered a massive espionage scandal according to which some twenty countries (Morocco, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Hungary, among others), had the Pegasus spyware , from the Israeli company NSO, with which the mobile phones of journalists, activists or politicians would have been infected.

The investigation was based on the leaking of 50,000 telephone numbers selected as potential targets by Pegasus clients since 2016. The only Spanish name that has emerged from said list, which included 180 informants, is that of Cembrero.

Different media pointed to Rabat as responsible for using Pegasus to spy on French journalists and Moroccan opponents based in France.

Morocco responded by denouncing

,

,

or

for defamation ;

plus Forbidden Stories and AI.

All the lawsuits were inadmissible by the Paris courts last March, arguing that freedom of expression protects the press and legal protection against defamation can be wielded by citizens, not by States.

In Spain, Morocco has opted for a different path: it has not invoked the law on the right to honor, nor sued for libel, nor has it demanded a rectification, alleging that Cembrero did not speak in his capacity as a journalist, but as the victim of an alleged espionage.

In its place, it has proposed "a negative declarative action", based on the so-called "bragging action", a medieval figure that dates back to the Partidas of Alfonso X El Sabio (13th century) whose objective is to force silence to those who claim a right that does not correspond to him.

Rabat does not deny that the journalist's phone was attacked with the Pegasus virus, but alleges that, if so, the person responsible for the infection would not be the Moroccan secret service, since it emphatically maintains that it does not have the Israeli spyware.

The journalist himself has acknowledged lack of evidence as to who was responsible for the

of his phone —the complaint filed by the Prosecutor's Office was provisionally filed due to the lack of a known perpetrator—, but he claims to be “certain” that those responsible are in the neighboring country. since private WhatsApp messages stolen from his mobile were reproduced by a Moroccan digital media.

Morocco accuses Cembrero of "boasting" of having been spied on and of harming the neighboring country with "the stigma" of an accusation that could harm diplomatic and economic relations with "potential effects of enormous magnitude", according to his letter, for which reason that asks the judge to immediately put an end to these accusations with a judicial pronouncement that would exonerate Rabat of any responsibility in espionage and could serve as a precedent in other countries.

Morocco has added to the initial demand the video of the appearance that Cembrero made on November 29 before the European Parliament to answer questions from the commission investigating the Pegasus case.

The Pegasus program was used to spy on 63 Catalan and Basque independentistas;

of which 18 cases, including the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonés, were recognized as their own by the National Intelligence Center (CNI).

It was also the system used to extract information from the mobile phones of President Pedro Sánchez and the Ministers of the Interior (Fernando Grande Marlaska), Defense (Margarita Robles) and Agriculture (Luis Planas), in the spring of 2021, at the height of the the diplomatic crisis with Morocco.

This is the fourth complaint from Rabat against the same journalist before the Spanish Justice, which has exonerated him on all previous occasions.

This time, the Moroccan authorities have hired the lawyer Ernesto Díaz-Bastien, known for having defended the former dictator Augusto Pinochet, when he was arrested in London by order of Judge Garzón;

the Syrian arms dealer Monzer Al Kasar or the commissioner José Manuel Villarejo.

The lawyer representing Morocco has not met the requirements of EL PAÍS to offer his version.