The phone of French President Emmanuel Macron was targeted for potential surveillance on behalf of Morocco in the Pegasus spyware case, French newspaper Le Monde reported on Tuesday.
The French presidency said that if the revelations about Macron’s phone were true, they would be very serious.
Le Monde said that, according to sources, one of Macron’s phone numbers, which he had used regularly since 2017, is on the list of numbers selected by Morocco’s intelligence service for potential cyber-spying.
Morocco had issued a statement on Monday denying any involvement in using Pegasus and rejecting what it called “unfounded and false allegations”.
An investigation published on Sunday by 17 media organisations, led by the Paris-based non-profit journalism group Forbidden Stories, said the spyware, made and licensed by Israeli company NSO, had been used in attempted and successful hacks of smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists.
The claim was based on a leaked document containing 50,000 numbers of people identified as potential targets for Pegasus between 2016 and June 2021.
The list was dominated by numbers from 10 countries – Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
