Pegasus Exposed: Morocco's Spies Named a Whistleblower
A former member of Morocco's domestic intelligence service has gone on record to confirm that the country's internal security apparatus deployed NSO Group's Pegasus spyware from 2017 onward, targeting both domestic dissidents and foreign officials in a surveillance operation that ran far longer and wider than previously documented, according to The Guardian.
A former member of Morocco's domestic intelligence service has gone on record to confirm that the country's internal security apparatus deployed NSO Group's Pegasus spyware from 2017 onward, targeting both domestic dissidents and foreign officials in a surveillance operation that ran far longer and wider than previously documented, according to The Guardian.
The disclosure is the most significant insider account to emerge from North Africa since the 2021 Pegasus Project revelations, and it lands at a moment when the spyware's legal and diplomatic fallout is still working through European courts. Morocco has consistently denied using Pegasus against domestic targets. The whistleblower's account contradicts that denial directly — naming categories of targets that include journalists, political figures, and foreign diplomats operating within Moroccan territory.
NSO Group has faced mounting legal pressure across multiple jurisdictions, including a landmark ruling against it in a US case brought by Meta's WhatsApp. The Moroccan revelations add fresh weight to arguments that state-sponsored spyware markets operate with near-total impunity unless someone on the inside decides the cost of silence is too high.
That calculation — one person, one conscience, one decision — is what intelligence services have never fully been able to price in.
