InvestigationAccording to data consulted by Forbidden Stories and “Le Monde”, Rabat is one of the biggest users of Pegasus spyware, to the detriment of the Algerian authorities.
March 30, 2019 will have been fatal to Saïd Bouteflika. That Saturday, the brother of the Algerian head of state is struggling to save what can still be saved. The presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika is about to be swept away by the massive demonstrations demanding his departure. And his power, which had strengthened in parallel with the weakening of Abdelaziz, sick, is also well threatened.
Having become a quasi-regent, he has everything to lose. So he tries that day a last game of poker to try to dismiss the ominous and all-powerful chief of staff of the army, Ahmed Gaïd Salah.
This event, like many others in 2019, are closely watched by Gaïd Salah’s men. But the latter are not the only ones to take a close look at what is happening in the country. An operator of the Moroccan security services is also interested in the political climate in Algeria.
More than 6,000 issues selected by Morocco
In this country, more than 6,000 telephone numbers belonging to politicians, the military, heads of intelligence services, senior officials, foreign diplomats in office or political activists have been selected as potential targets of the Pegasus spyware. by the Moroccan client of the Israeli company NSO. According to data shared by the organization Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International at World, Morocco is a heavy user of the software and these 6,000 numbers constitute a large cohort, compared to the 50,000 telephone numbers selected worldwide, between 2017 and 2019.
In this surveillance operation, Morocco did not limit itself to Algerian territory. The presumed numbers of Algerian citizens, mostly diplomats, have been targeted at least in South Africa, Angola, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Canada, Côte d’Ivoire, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Spain, Ethiopia, Finland, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, Czech Republic, Rwanda, Senegal, Sweden, Switzerland , Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Zimbabwe.
In France, the Pegasus operator was unsurprisingly interested in the Algerian embassy and the number of the Algerian ambassador, Abdelkader Mesdoua, or the one assigned to Colonel Karim Hadj Sadok, the military attaché. On the other side of the Mediterranean, it is the number of the then French ambassador, Xavier Driencourt, and that attributed to the French military attaché that were targeted. In addition to another which would have belonged to the ambassador of the European Union in Algiers.
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