French President Emmanuel Macron's phone was on the list of potential targets for surveillance by Morocco's intelligence services in the case of Pegasus espionage, the French newspaper "Mond" announced yesterday.
The French presidency announced that, if it turns out that the revelations about Macron's phone are true, then it is very serious. The authorities will conduct an investigation to shed light on the allegations, the statement said.
Mond reported that, according to sources, one of Macron's phone numbers, which he has used regularly since 2017, is on the list of numbers selected by the Moroccan intelligence service for potential cyberespionage.
Morocco issued a statement on Monday denying the use of the Pegasus and rejecting "baseless and false allegations". Former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and 14 ministers were also targeted in 2019, "Mond" writes.
An investigation, the results of which were published by 17 media organizations on Sunday, found that spyware, produced by the Israeli company NSO, was used in attempted and successful hacking of phones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists around the world.
"Mond" emphasized that it does not have access to Macron's phone and therefore cannot confirm whether it was really spied on, but that it was established that other phones were successfully accessed, including the one belonging to the former Minister of Environmental Protection Francois de Rouge.
Yesterday, the Paris prosecutor opened an investigation into the allegations of the research portal Mediapart and two journalists that they were the targets of espionage by the Moroccan services that used the Pegaz software.
"The only way to get to the bottom of this is for the judicial authorities to conduct an independent investigation into the widespread espionage organized by Morocco in France," Mediapart's Twitter account said.
The founder of the NSO group, Šalev Julio, said yesterday that the published list of alleged Pegasus targets "is not related to NSO". "The platform we produce prevents terrorist attacks and saves lives," he said and added that during the 11-year existence of the NSO, it cooperated with 45 countries, and rejected almost 90. He did not name any of them.
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