The Rabat Protocol: How Moroccan Intelligence Outsmarted a Naive European Elite

A former Moroccan intelligence officer, operating under the pseudonym Safir, has laid bare the inner workings of the Direction Générale de la Surveillance du Territoire. Between 2017 and 2021, the DGST transformed from a conventional security apparatus into a digital panopticon, deploying NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to monitor journalists, activists, and high-ranking European officials.

The acquisition of this cyber weapon was remarkably transactional. Representatives from the Israeli NSO Group demonstrated the software's capabilities in a Rabat villa in 2017, seamlessly taking control of test devices. The financial backing did not come from the Moroccan treasury but from the United Arab Emirates. The whistleblower indicated that the Emiratis purchased the system and shared access with allied intelligence services. Internally, the DGST reserved the costly Pegasus system exclusively for high-value targets, treating it as an absolute last resort.

The crosshairs quickly shifted across the Mediterranean. The Pegasus system, operating under the NSO codename Morgan, swept up more than two hundred Spanish mobile numbers. The victims included Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Defense Minister Margarita Robles, and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska. At the time, Madrid and Rabat were embroiled in a diplomatic dispute over Spain hosting a Western Saharan separatist leader. Instead of mounting a robust defense, Spain’s socialist government, already presiding over a sputtering economy and deteriorating infrastructure, offered a masterclass in geopolitical appeasement.

In a display of staggering subservience, Grande-Marlaska awarded Abdellatif Hammouchi, the head of the DGST, the highest honour of the Spanish Guardia Civil last year. This occurred despite mounting evidence that Moroccan intelligence had infiltrated the communications of the very Guardia Civil officers who had travelled to North Africa to share counter-terrorism expertise. The Spanish judicial system proved equally toothless, with an investigating judge shelving the espionage inquiry this year due to a lack of Israeli cooperation. The French political establishment, grappling with severe domestic security crises stemming from failed immigration policies, also found its ministers compromised by the same Moroccan network.

The digital dragnet appears to have ceased in late 2021, shortly after the United States government blacklisted NSO Group. Subsequently, the Israeli defence ministry halted cyber-technology exports to several nations, including Morocco. Yet the geopolitical damage remains entirely asymmetrical. Rabat successfully mapped the private communications of its European neighbours for years, facing absolutely no diplomatic repercussions from the capitals it violated.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com