Rabat (AFP) - Moroccan human rights activists announced Wednesday that they have joined a trial targeting the "NSO" company in the United States, based on a complaint by the American Internet giant " Meta ", as "victims" of the Pegasus spy application developed by the Israeli company.

Six Moroccan activists said in a statement that some of them had "already received official messages from the WhatsApp company owned by the Meta Group, alerting them that their mobile phones had been subjected to a criminal hack from the Pegasus application via WhatsApp."

The rest of the members of this group said that they "learned that they were victims of a similar hack through international organizations," and decided to form a coalition of "Moroccan victims of illegal hacking of their phones with the Pegasus app."

And accordingly, "joining collectively the case brought by Meta Corporation against NSO Corporation in the San Francisco Courts" of the United States.

The coalition includes human rights activists Fouad Abdel-Momani, Abdel-Latif Hamamouchi, Hisham Al-Mansouri, and journalist and university professor Omar Broksi.

It also includes Kholoud Mokhtari, the wife of imprisoned journalist Suleiman Raissouni, and Ali Reda Zayan, son of imprisoned lawyer Muhammad Zayan. Raissouni and Zian are imprisoned on criminal charges, which they consider "targeted because of their opinions."

They relied on the US Supreme Court's decision on January 9, which authorized the "Meta" company to prosecute "NSO" company, after the latter requested to drop the prosecution dating back to October 2019 before a federal court in California.

"Pegasus was used to suppress human rights activists, political opponents, journalists and lawyers. These practices must stop immediately... It goes without saying that we must seize the opportunity of this trial in the United States to achieve justice," Fouad Abdel Momani told AFP.

Morocco is among the countries accused by an Amnesty International report in the summer of 2021 of using Pegasus software to hack the phones of Moroccan and foreign journalists, politicians, and human rights activists.

Rabat strongly denied the accusation and filed lawsuits against newspapers that reported it in France and Spain, confirming its lack of evidence.

For its part, the National Committee for Monitoring the Protection of Personal Data (official) announced last week a series of meetings with technical experts "about the unproven technical allegations" of the Amnesty International report.

Its president, Omar al-Sagroshny, commented Wednesday on Twitter, "We are waiting for the prosecutors to justify their accusations scientifically, avoiding media assassination attempts. Why do they want to avoid discussion?"