Moroccan journalist Omar Radi had his phone targeted by Israeli spyware, Amnesty finds

Almost eight months after publishing a first report on the use of spyware produced by Israeli company NSO Group against Moroccan human rights defenders, Amnesty International revealed on Monday that the phone of Moroccan Omar Radi has similarly been targeted.

In a new report, Amnesty International’s Security Lab «identified similar evidence of the targeting of Omar Radi, a prominent activist and journalist from Morocco from January 2019 until the end of January 2020».

«Evidence gathered through our technical analysis of Omar Radi’s iPhone revealed traces of the same 'network injection' attacks we described in our earlier report that were used against Maati Monjib», the international NGO stressed.

Amnesty found out that Radi’s phone was targeted and put under surveillance during the same period he was prosecuted.

For the record, the Moroccan authorities arrested Omar Radi on December 26, 2019, because of a critical tweet published in April. On March 17, he was sentenced to a four-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 500 dirhams.