The Kingdom has announced that it will take legal action against "fake news"

Marruecos reitera su desvinculación del Caso Pegasus

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Rabat has again defended itself against accusations of using the Israeli Pegasus programme. Morocco has previously been accused by the French press of using the software to spy on French President Emmanuel Macron. "The Kingdom of Morocco has never acquired nor used the so-called PEGASUS programme. The news spread recently on this matter are false and malicious," the Arab country said in a statement issued by the law firm Ernesto Diaz-Bastien and Lawyers. "Those who have been claiming or are claiming the contrary will have to answer for it before the courts," it adds.

Rabat also assures that it will initiate legal action before the Spanish courts for the publication and dissemination of "false, malicious and insulting news against the Kingdom about alleged illegal spying on Spanish citizens". The Alawite Kingdom has already initiated legal proceedings in France and Germany. "Morocco has chosen to rely on justice, both domestic and international, according to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Bourita, in relation to the persistent media campaign that evokes an alleged infiltration of the telephones of several national and foreign public figures through a computer programme called Pegasus," the law firm reported. Minister Bourita had recently warned in an interview with the magazine Jeune Afrique that any person or institution that accuses his country will have to "present proof or take their slanderous denunciation to court".

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Rabat has already taken legal action in France against Amnesty International, Forbidden Stories, Le Monde, Mediapart and Radio France for claiming that Morocco used Israeli software to spy on foreign leaders and other figures such as activists, journalists and politicians. In the case of the accusations by Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, Bourita said they were "based on pure speculation". He said that the "false accusations" by Forbidden Stories are known for "their main hostility towards Morocco".

In Germany, the Kingdom has initiated legal proceedings against the newspaper Süddeustsche Zeitung GmbH for "false allegations in the context of a report on the alleged use of the Pegasus spy programme by the Kingdom of Morocco".

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However, this is not the first time Rabat has defended itself against accusations of espionage. In July, when the scandal was in the international media spotlight, the Moroccan government claimed that it had never acquired software to infiltrate. "Morocco is a state governed by the rule of law that guarantees the secrecy of personal communications by force of the Constitution", the government said at the time. It also denounced being "the target of hateful attacks that reveal the will of certain media circles and NGOs".

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Pegasus is an advanced system developed by the Israeli technology company NSO Group headed by Shalev Hulio, which sells the software to military, intelligence and security agencies in 40 countries around the world. Although the initial objective of this programme was to pursue criminals and terrorists, a data leak analysed by several international media outlets such as The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed that Pegasus spied on hundreds of important figures. Data on up to 180 journalists from the Associated Press, Le Monde, Reuters and CNN were linked to the programme. Subsequently, it was revealed that Pegasus also spied on activists, businessmen, members of royal families and world leaders.

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