“They Have No Evidence Against Me”: Moroccan Journalist Omar Radi Jailed After He Criticized Gov't

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Quarantine report. I’m Amy Goodman. 

In Morocco, authorities arrested award-winning journalist and human rights activist Omar Radi Wednesday on what press freedom advocates call “retaliatory charges.” Omar Radi reported on the role of the Moroccan state and big business in dispossessing farmers of their tribal lands. He has spoken out about facing harassment and surveillance. An Amnesty International report alleges authorities hacked Radi’s phone using Pegasus spyware from the Israeli company NSO Group. Now a court has charged Radi with undermining state security by receiving foreign funding and collaborating with foreign intelligence, and also charged him with rape. The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement that, “Moroccan authorities in the past have plainly tried to make any charge against him stick in retaliation for his work as a journalist.” CPJ called on them to “release Radi [and] investigate any sexual assault charges in a credible and transparent manner.”

Radi’s lawyers deny all the charges against him. Omar Radi is reportedly being held in a prison in Casablanca that is a COVID hot spot. 

Radi was arrested on July 29th. I spoke to him before his arrest, on July 16th when he was being taken in several times a week for questioning. I asked him to explain what was happening.

OMAR RADI: Thank you, Amy Goodman. First, it start it all started by media harassment by pro-state media that started leaking my private information and also saying fake news about me and insulting me, my family, my colleagues and my friends with a lot of fake news. But also with a real news, my bank information, for example, that only state officials can access to them. So, this harassment campaign accused me of having worked for intelligence agencies, especially U.S. and British intelligence agencies. And surprise: June 22nd, Amnesty International released its report about me being spied on by Moroccan authorities using the Pegasus virus. July 23–the next day, the prosecutor, the general prosecutor of Casablanca, ordered the national brigade of judicial police to investigate me on the basis of the same information that has been leaked on this. On this pro-state media. About me being having been a spy for, for I don’t know what country. So, 24 I got the police summons and 25 I had my first hearing by the national political police in Morocco. And it continued and now on one out of two days, I’m at their offices answering ridiculous and surrealistic questions such as: ‘You have met with with the spokesperson or diplomat from the Dutch embassy. What kind of intelligence services were you providing him?’ And without any evidence. They don’t face me with any evidence. They just asked me questions like that, that are empty questions, and they want me to confess something I didn’t know. And now it’s, it looks like harassment and everybody in Morocco knows it is judicial harassment for what happened with Amnesty.

AMY GOODMAN: So let me step back for a moment. Omar, can you talk about your work as a journalist, the kind of stories that you do?

OMAR RADI: Yeah. This year I worked a lot on land dispossession, because in Morocco we have collective land ownership. And the tribal lands are very, very large in Morocco and the state is trying to get these lands, to inject them into the market, and there is a lot of injustice in this policies because people are not compensated well. And these lands are re-evaluated very highly. And it all benefits big capital in Morocco actually. So I work on land grabbing, land dispossession. I also work on finance sectors and the relationship between the power and business in Morocco. That’s my framework, and also human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: And so then explain what this Pegasus program is, how you believe. I mean, the government in Morocco has access to your bank accounts and other information. But what happened to your phone?

OMAR RADI: Pegasus is quite a silent program. You don’t know you don’t feel it, actually. And it’s not a persistent program. It doesn’t stay in your phone or in your computer. It works using network injections so people need to be near you to to make themselves pass as a as a relay antenna and your phone is connected to a fake relay antenna. And then the network injection works, and then the program works and they get, I don’t know he has a lot of features: it can use your microphone, it can use your keyboard, it can use your screen and get any information that is stored in your phone. So I don’t know what the amount of information is they’ve stolen from my phone. But I am sure this pro-state media, they published many information that I have exchanged even in Signal, which is known that that is a very safe program. So, I have evidence that my own conversations have been leaked to prostate media. The same that are leaking also my bank information.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about what happened specifically when the amnesty report came out? The significance of what they said is very much focused on your case. And then, what the Moroccan government said to you when they started calling you in for these interrogations, and what have you been charged with?

OMAR RADI: In the police, they don’t talk about Amnesty report. The government said in a public statement, an official statement, the head of the Moroccan diplomacy said that I have been used as a pawn by Amnesty International to harass Morocco. That its a democracy And that I myself, I have ties with an agent, a liaison agent from another country. And this was really serious because it’s the government in person who is threatening me and accusing me of all this, while I’m just, I was the victim here, and I was the person who has been spied on. The least I wanted from the government is to to launch an investigation about what was happening, and I was even okay to give them my phone to audit it. But, I have been, the next day I have been attacked and aggressed and and accused of treason and many other insults that will try to discredit me with the public opinion.

AMY GOODMAN: Omar if you’re charged with treason, could you face the death penalty in Morocco?

OMAR RADI: The Criminal Code articles. It’s large. And I don’t know, I think I think they have no evidence against me and, and this is an empty case. But, if they want to charge me I can go from one year, five year, to of prison, to death penalty. But I think it’s unlikely. This is a this is not really serious. Because, the state could not, the state did not consider that I’m an individual. I’m in a war against all the institutions I’m not in confrontation with the state. I’m an individual that needs to do his journalism. In a safe way and people let me do it in peace and also to let me express myself as I as I want to. I’m not in a war against anybody. And the state thinks that I’m going in a war. This is surrealistic. And, I don’t know.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you worried about the people around you closest to you? Can you talk about who they are attacking and revealing, who are your friends, your colleagues who you live with?

OMAR RADI: Yeah, the very last surprise, for example, was that my father’s phone calls have been transcripted and in this pro-states thug medias.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second. Your father. Transcripts of your father’s conversations are printed in the Moroccan media?

OMAR RADI: Yeah, yeah. So now even my father is his phone taped. So this is crazy, this has taken proportions that are incredible.

AMY GOODMAN: So let’s talk about when all of this happened. The Amnesty report says forensic artifacts that Amnesty International extracted from your phone suggests that the Pegasus network injection attacks occurred on January 27th, on February 11, and the 13th of September 2019.

OMAR RADI: Yeah. Yeah, this is what they found because the the virus makes disappear it’s fingerprints. So it’s hard to find all the traces of the identifiers actually.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, we spoke to you in March. Shortly after we first spoke with you, you were given a suspended four month prison term for a Tweet that you put out in 2019 about the jailing of a group of activists. What were you tweeting about?

OMAR RADI: There were these strong social movements in the north of Morocco, the Hirak Rif, and its leaders were asking for hospitals, jobs, job opportunities and public services. And they ended up jailed. Some of them for 20 years of jail, of being accused, like I’m accused now, of jeopardizing national security. And I tweeted about this judge and I said, ‘we will never forget about all these people with no dignity.’ And I have been accused of outrage to a judge and sentenced to four months, suspended. And I went to the appeals. I’m still waiting for the appeals date.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you assume you are always being surveilled, Omar?

OMAR RADI: Yeah, I have evidence about that, actually. Because the police showed me that I was, they were surveilling my phones and my calls and my SMS messages since 2011. The investigation with the police went back until 2011. So they knew who I was talking to, who was texting, who was texting me, who was calling me, etc. It’s not speculation. It’s not supposition. I am now sure that I have been surveilled by the state. And the state in Morocco has a good track record of acquiring these kind of tools. Hacking Team Phineas Fisher, BAE Systems, Morocco is a customer and we have the proof and the evidence that Morocco has paid more than $3 million for example to Hacking Team, or the Italian company for its virus remote control system, RCS.

AMY GOODMAN: Omar Radi, how is the Moroccan media covering what’s happening to you? What are other journalists saying? Is civil society rallying around you?

OMAR RADI: Yeah, civil society is rallying around me. And I think the public opinion is is very, showed a lot of solidarity as well, as the Americans living abroad and many other NGOs at the international level. Media is also our yeah, cautiously covering the facts of what’s happening and waiting to see the next steps, except the pro-state media and what I call the thugs that are, that are working as a journalist for the state. They already sentenced me, they already called me that ‘this spy, the traitor,’ etc. Those those media are in their role, I think, they are functioning as state thugs.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that the Moroccan government is using you, Omar Radi, as an example a warning to other journalists, not to do the kind of corporate and state investigations that you do?

OMAR RADI: I think, I think what we’ve done with many other journalists in the past is, has upset the state and the state in its strategy towards the media decided not to not to make this happen again and not to make it repeat again, and not to make this kind of journalism exist. So yes, I think, I think that it’s also it’s, it’s a revenge actually. And it’s a very fast reaction after the Amnesty report. But also, it has this function to make people afraid, by this kind of courage, of this kind of journalism, this kind of people speak out, and call to to call-out against injustice, etc. I think this is considered as dangerous by the state.

AMY GOODMAN: The first amnesty report showed examples of this Pegasus software injected into other journalists’ phones, documenting, surveilling, spying on everything they were doing. What advice do you have to working journalists?

OMAR RADI: We cannot we cannot have the means of states and huge companies huge defense cyber defense companies. I think the best thing to do is to get a lot of precautions not to use the phone, if it’s not necessary, if we can do the things physically, etc. Protecting sources as journalists is very, very important. Because one the purposes of the surveillance is to access, to map your network. Using the latest security software and anonymity, connections, I think this is very, very important.

AMY GOODMAN: And Omar doesn’t make sources afraid to talk to you? You are a targeted journalist. Has anything happened to people you spoke to for your stories?

OMAR RADI: I didn’t try to call them yet because I’m always in the police offices. I need to go back to my work. So, I hope to see what what’s happened in. After all, this nightmare is over.

AMY GOODMAN: We are speaking to right before your sixth interrogation tomorrow. Are you concerned at any point, like tomorrow, you could be taken and not released?

OMAR RADI: Everything is possible, actually. It’s not excluded. But if they if they arrest me, they have to show material evidence, which they don’t have. So it would be an abusive arrest and my lawyers are, are aware of all that. And I gave all evidence and all the proof of my innocence to my lawyers and all my partners to journalists, etc. So I’m not afraid. I go there. I stopped answering their questions, and I stopped signing their reports since yesterday. And I’m not doing it again. So I stopped cooperating with the police because they’re asking empty questions, and questions that don’t respect the presumption of innocence. So I’m not playing this game. If they have something, they just arrest me and send me to the prosecutor and then to to trial. ut I’m not playing this Q and A game with the police that just want me to confess that I was something I never was. So, I took this very hard decision: Not keeping silent, and not signing any testimonies or confession.

AMY GOODMAN: You said you’ve made this decision to keep silent?

OMAR RADI: Yes. I’m not cooperating with the Moroccan police.

AMY GOODMAN: Award-winning journalist Omar Radi. He was arrested and on July 29th, and taken into custody. We conducted the interview on July 16th.

This is Democracy Now! Democracy Now, the War and Peace report. To see our first interview with Omar Radi go to DemocracyNow.org. Thanks very much for joining us.