Rabat – Jonathan Scott, a researcher of malware, spyware, and forensics, said that Amnesty falsified its forensics reports that alleged that Morocco spied on journalist Omar Radi.

“This screenshot shows that Amnesty found a false positive indicator in Omar’s report and never mentioned this to anyone,” Scott said on Twitter.

The researcher assured that the NGO had knowingly withheld the information that disproves its allegations. “The Pegasus case of Morocco has no scientific basis, & Amnesty admits it,” he said.

Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories had accused Morocco of using Israeli spyware Pegasus to spy on activists, journalists, and foreign officials, including Radi.

Pegasus is a spyware developed by Israeli company NSO and can be covertly installed on smartphones.

Scott’s white paper

The researcher had published a white paper on Github in December detailing his findings in the allegations against Morocco. 

“I am requesting an iOS Pegasus spyware sample to be shared with everyone as there is no control to test against,” the white paper states.

In addition to the absence of a control group, the researcher also criticized the lack of documentation explaining the processes of choosing which modules are checked and why some processes found by the report were considered malicious.

“Next, there is no information about the success to error rates that can be expected, no list of iOS versions that have been studied, no table of documentation for false positive results that have been identified, and there are no specific conditions that need to be met in order to properly identify a device with your tool,” Scott said.

He explained that despite meeting the criteria for the MVT-Tool, a tool used by forensic researchers and investigators, he could not find a “reproducible methodology” for why it functions the way it does in Amnesty’s findings.

Amnesty’s published methodology is “based on assumptions” and cannot be reproduced or validated independently, he added.

Pointing to the examples of Omar Radi and Claude Mangin, two individuals who Amnesty said were spied on using the Pegasus software, Scott specified that Amnesty removed false positive alerts on them without explaining why.

He continued by demanding that Amnesty provide documentation for their report and explain why they removed the false positive indicator.

Scott had reported similar issues in his examination of Amnesty’s claim that Spain’s government was also using the Pegasus software to spy on Catalan activists, criticizing incomplete reports and the removal of false positive alerts.

“Knowingly withholding information from world governments pertaining to the discovery of a false positive indicator is common practice for Amnesty and Citizen Lab,” he said in his paper on that subject.

Unfounded claims

Following Amnesty and Forbidden Stories’ original report on Morocco, the North African country has consistently rejected the allegations as the NGOs failed to present conclusive evidence to back their claims.

Morocco initiated legal action following the allegation, with defamation lawsuits against Amnesty and Forbidden Stories, as well as against news outlets that promoted their claims.

Olivier Baratelli, a lawyer representing Morocco in the case, recently also stressed the absence of evidence linking the country to the spyware.

“Two investigating judges have been appointed to complaints from different people, who accuse Morocco of having spied on their phones, but no technical element comes to light [in] these accusations,” Baratelli detailed.

French judicial expert David Zenati echoed those concerns, adding that “the only place” one could get information on whether a country used the spyware would be the place where the NSO servers are located.

There was further criticism following the emergence of reports linking the Pegasus software to numerous European clients, which left many wondering why the Amnesty report chose to focus primarily on non-Western countries.

The case of Omar Radi has also led to a resolution from the European Parliament, which accused Morocco of “harassing” and “intimidating” journalists in the country.

The resolution was immediately rejected by both the Moroccan government and several  figures in the country,  criticizing the European Parliament for attempting to interfere in Morocco’s internal affairs.

Morocco’s Parliament held a meeting on Wednesday where it condemned allegations made against the country without evidence, including the Pegasus affair.

Several of the speakers at the meeting agreed that the accusations against Morocco come from a sense of frustration with the country’s diplomatic gains, especially in the Western Sahara dispute.

The meeting was the second one on the topic, following another session last week that saw several politicians and civil actors condemn the EU resolution as unjust interference in Morocco’s affairs.