Pegasus by Laurent Richard

Author:Laurent Richard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

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ON JUNE 22, 2020, Forbidden Stories posted the story of the Pegasus attack on Omar Radi, along with our partners from Le Monde, the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the Washington Post. We were unable to include a comment from the Moroccan government, which refused to answer our queries or even deign to acknowledge receipt. Omar may have been disappointed that there was no official response, but he sent us a message of thanks that day. “Makes a lot of noise here,” he said. “It is awesome.”

Two days later, Omar was summoned to the BNPJ offices in Casablanca, where the prosecutors were already busy. Somebody there had alerted Chouf TV so its cameras could be on hand to record Omar’s perp walk, and the king’s prosecutor had readied a press release about the reason for the summons. “It’s official,” Omar wrote to us that afternoon, after suffering through a six-hour interrogation. “They are accusing me of working with foreign intelligence agencies. They are pushing the ridiculousness very far.”

Our key partners did follow-up stories on the arrest, with statements from Omar and the Moroccan authorities. The Washington Post was able to tag to the end of its report a not-so-veiled official threat from the Moroccan Embassy in DC. “Due to the short notice,” a spokeswoman wrote, “we are unable to comment other than to underline that we reserve the right to pursue legal action in case any unverified or false information is published on this particular case.” Omar retained his sense of humor—“We’ll either see each other again in a few hours,” he had told a friend on his way into his interrogation, “or maybe in five years”—and his defiance. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he said for publication. “I’m going with my head held high.”

Omar was summoned for another interrogation the following week. Investigators grilled him about the grant he had received from the South African foundation to help fund his land appropriation investigation, and then leaked to one of their preferred Moroccan media outlets the identity of Omar’s make-believe handler from MI6 in London. Three days later, Omar and a friend were arrested for confronting and taking video of a Chouf TV cameraman who had been following him around, recording him and a friend, and taunting them. After the ensuing quarrel, the police arrested Omar and his friend and held them in jail overnight. The prosecutor’s office added to Omar’s docket new charges of public drunkenness and capturing images without consent.

He sounded weary and maybe a little afraid two days later, on July 8, when he sent Sandrine an audio file to catch us up on the latest harassment. “I’m sorry it’s going to make you more work,” he said. The tone of his voice was so different from usual; it was the first time I ever heard him sound despairing. “I don’t know. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you is that three summonses in two weeks is too much. It’s too much.… The authorities in Morocco

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