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Rabat – When Israeli Minister of Defense Benjamin Gantz flew to Paris earlier this week, he reassured his French counterpart, Florence Parly, that President Emmanuel Macron’s phone was not compromised with the Pegasus software.
In the first meeting between an Israeli defense minister and a French Minister of the Army since 2013, the NSO espionage affair was a central topic of discussion. During the meeting, Parly indicated that “clarifications that are expected by France today, and on which the trust and mutual respect between our two countries depend,” reads a statement from the French Ministry of Defense.
During the meeting, Gantz stressed that NSO’s technology had not been used to spy on President Macron or other French officials, as International media have alleged. “Israel is taking the allegations seriously,” Gantz told Parly.
Gantz maintains that the software has not been used for any illicit means, despite accusations against the NSO Group, the Israeli government, and governments accused of using the spyware for illicit purposes . The French Ministry of Defense confirmed this, noting that according to Gantz, “the State of Israel approves the export of cyber products exclusively to government entities, for lawful use and solely for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and fighting terrorism.”
French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal previously said that Parly was eager to “question her counterpart about the knowledge the Israeli government had of the activities of NSO’s clients,” and how will the Israeli government “prevent a misuse of these tools that are highly intrusive.”
Meanwhile, parallel to the meeting in Paris, the Israeli authorities were inspecting the NSO Group’s offices in Herzliya, Israel, on Wednesday, July 28. While many early reports of the visit described it as a raid, NSO clarified in a statement that it was just a normal visit. “The company is working in full transparency with the Israeli authorities,” the statement read.
Spanish newspaper OKDiario on July 23 unveiled an investigation that stated that Macron’s phone had been infected, but the spyware used was not Pegasus, but instead the DarkMatter spyware tool that is used by the French intelligence community. While claims of Moroccan espionage on Macron received major headlines worldwide, OKdiario rebuttal received no such attention.
