Lenaïg Bredoux

Surveillance

Lenaig Bredoux was twice the victim of a Pegasus attack, in 2019 and 2020. A forensic analysis, conducted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab, showed a vulnerability in iMessage (iPhone) was used to compromise her phone. The director of Bredoux’s publication, Edwy Plenel, was also targeted with the same technology.

Who is she?

Lenaïg Bredoux is a French journalist working for the investigative news outlet Mediapart. Since 2016, she has written several investigations on sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations. In October 2020, she was appointed as Mediapart’s gender editor, meaning that she looks over the representation of women in the publication’s editorial content.

In 2015, she wrote about diplomatic tensions between France and Morocco caused by the attempt by a French judge to summon Abdellatif Hammouchi, the head of Moroccan secret service, to testify on multiple torture cases. Bredoux’s critical article alleged that French authorities were forced to compromise in order to resume diplomatic relations with their Moroccan ally, and granted them a new judicial cooperation agreement according to which judges should favor transferring cases to Moroccan judges when the facts happened in Morocco.

The president of the French branch of Amnesty International commented at the time: “Victims will no longer file a complaint in France because they risk being threatened. This is an obstruction of justice.”

Her work

Response

Moroccan authorities said there was no proof of them being a client of NSO Group. NSO Group did not answer Forbidden Stories’ questions on specific targets but said it “will continue to investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action based on the results of these investigations.”