Mexico president denies his government spies on opponents

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said that his government has never spied on its opponents, after an investigation accused the military of hacking the telephones of several people.

"It's not true that journalists or opponents are spied on," Lopez Obrador told reporters.

"The army has not engaged in espionage during our time" in government, he added. "What's being done is intelligence (gathering) to confront criminals."

According to an investigation published, files obtained by a group of hackers called Guacamaya suggested that the army had continued to use Pegasus spyware after Lopez Obrador took office in 2018.

The targets included a journalist, a press columnist and a human rights activist, according to the Network in Defence of Digital Rights and its partners, assisted by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab.

Last year, an international investigation called the Pegasus Project revealed that 15,000 Mexican smart phone numbers were among more than 50,000 believed to have been selected by clients of Israeli firm NSO Group for potential surveillance.

According to the Pegasus Project, Mexican agencies that have previously acquired the spyware included the defence ministry, the attorney general's office and the national security intelligence service.

The potential targets reportedly included 25 journalists as well as Lopez Obrador's family when he was the opposition leader and political rival of then-president Enrique Pena Nieto.