A Moroccan human rights activist has been detained amid an investigation into spreading false information, authorities said Thursday, following a Facebook post referencing Morocco’s alleged spying on France in 2021.
Fouad Abdelmoumni, 66, was taken into custody Wednesday on charges of “reporting a knowingly fictitious crime” and “spreading numerous false claims”, the public prosecutor’s office told MAP news agency.
Once the head of the anti-corruption NGO Transparency Morocco and a member of the Alliance of the Left Federation party, Abdelmoumni is set to appear in court on Friday, his lawyer Mohammed Nouini told AFP.
His detention came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron ended a three-day state visit to Morocco aimed at mending relations that had been strained in recent years.
In his Facebook post, Abdelmoumni said Morocco had used the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware for espionage against France.
“France, which sees its position decline among all nations, would not want to give in to the blackmail of a weak state which uses all the means of pressure at its disposal… including espionage,” he wrote on Tuesday.
The Moroccan Political Prisoners Support Body, where Abdelmoumni also serves as a coordinator, described his arrest in a press release as “arbitrary” and “part of a wave of harassment targeting” him.
In 2021, Morocco was accused of deploying Pegasus to monitor prominent figures, including Macron.
The spyware, developed by Israeli firm NSO Group, can infiltrate mobile phones, extracting data and activating cameras or microphones for surveillance.
These allegations were based on a report by investigative outlet Forbidden Stories and rights group Amnesty International, which Morocco called “baseless and false”.
Macron’s visit came as a sign of reconciliation between Paris and Rabat.
The two countries signed some 40 economic cooperation agreements worth more than 10 billion euros, in sectors including development, infrastructure and energy.
Macron also renewed French support for Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a territory largely controlled by Morocco while the Algeria-backed Polisario Front campaigns for its independence.
The United Nations considers Western Sahara a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991 whose stated aim is to organise a referendum on the territory’s future.
© Agence France-Presse
