The journalist Ignacio Cembrero in a file picture.
The Court of First Instance No. 72 in Madrid has dismissed the case brought by the Kingdom of Morocco against the Spanish journalist Ignacio Cembrero. The neighboring state accused the whistleblower, a Maghreb expert, of boasting that he was spied on by Moroccan secret services with the Israeli Pegasus virus and asked the court for a verdict categorically stating that it was not about Cembrero acted against any unlawful interference of his mobile phone by Rabat.
However, the judge dismisses Morocco’s claims, claiming that the analysis of the journalist’s phone terminal, carried out after he denounced an alleged illegal interception of his communications, showed that at the time of the investigation in August 2021 he was not infected with any malware , “but it cannot be ruled out that it was previously installed and left no trace, so it cannot be ruled out that Mr. Cembrero’s mobile device became an object of espionage through the introduction of a computer program.”
Regarding the public statements in which the journalist allegedly boasted that he was spied on by the Israeli secret service, the judge came to the opposite conclusion: “Mr. Cembrero’s statements in the media point out that it is very difficult to prove or to prove that it was Morocco that introduced the Pegasus software on your mobile device and that you cannot prove that any state – in this case Morocco – is responsible for such facts”.
In the interviews he gave after his name appeared on the list of suspected spies with the Pegasus program, according to research by the journalist group Forbidden Stories, the sentence goes on to say that it was always the interviewers who claimed that the Moroccan secret service accessed his cell phone. but not him. “Nor can he be held responsible for the publication of a tweet by a foreign newspaper,” he adds, referring to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The judge therefore concludes that Cembrero “has not disclosed publicly” that Morocco “installed a computer program in his phone” and that his statements about the alleged interest of Moroccan intelligence in his work were confirmed out “before the Dissemination of a journalistic investigation” after seeing private WhatsApp messages published on a Moroccan website and facing “the seriousness of some events” that have led to the opening of criminal proceedings and an investigation in the European Parliament.
In July 2021, the international journalist consortium Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International (AI) uncovered a massive espionage scandal, according to which around twenty countries (including Morocco, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Hungary) possessed the Pegasus spyware from the Israeli company NSO, with which the Cell phones of journalists, activists or politicians would have been infected. The investigation was based on leaking 50,000 phone numbers selected as potential targets by Pegasus customers since 2016. The only Spanish name to emerge from this list, which included 180 informants, is Cembrero, who was editor for EL PAÍS and is currently from El Confidential.
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Various media outlets pointed out that Rabat was responsible for using Pegasus to spy on French journalists and Moroccan opponents based in France. Morocco responded by denouncing Le Monde, Radio France, L’Humanité or France Médias Monde for defamation; plus Forbidden Stories and AI. All lawsuits were dismissed by Paris courts last March, arguing that freedom of expression protects the press and legal protections against defamation can be exercised by citizens, not states.
The Pegasus program was used to spy on 63 Catalan and Basque independentistas; 18 cases, including Generalitat President Pere Aragonès, have been 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 Interior (Fernando Grande-Marlaska), Defense (Margarita Robles) and Agriculture (Luis Planas) in spring 2021, at the height of the diplomatic crisis with Morocco .
This is the fourth complaint that Rabat has filed against Cembrero before the Spanish judiciary, which she has filed like all previous ones, although the decision can be appealed.
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