Anonymous Targets Morocco: Operation #NadorKiss To Follow #FreeBoussa

Anonymous has returned to the defense of three Moroccan teenagers who were arrested in the town of Nador in October for posting a photograph of two of them sharing a kiss, with the operation #NadorKiss. On Wednesday, two days before the teens were scheduled to appear at a closed hearing, the hacktivist collective announced plans to barrage the Moroccan government with tweets and faxes.

According to Al Jazeera, the "subjects" in the photo were a 14-year-old girl named Raja and a 15-year-old boy named Mouhsin. Another boy, Oussama, 16, who reportedly snapped the photo, was also arrested with the others on Oct. 3 and held for nearly a week at a juvenile detention center. They have since been released, but they all face prison sentences of up to two years, CBC reported.

Shortly after the arrest, Mouhssin uploaded a video to YouTube claiming that Raja had posted the kissing photo without his knowledge. In an interview with Nador City, Mouhssin said he was shocked by the arrest.

“A week after the pictures were posted, we were immediately arrested,” Mouhssin said. “Human rights associations demanded the arrest. And it is not their business in the first place.”

The teenager added that the incident had lost him the respect of his peers and teachers. “I’ve developed a complex because of this. And this is really sad,” he added.

“People make fun of me in the street, at school, at home and everywhere else. They blame me for spreading indecency even if it was the girl who shared the pictures, not me.”

In an interview with the publication, Mohamed Abdennabaoui, director of criminal affairs and pardons at the Moroccan Justice Ministry, said “their sentence will be educational at most, in my opinion.”

But Anonymous appeared unsatisfied with that explanation. The group created a special Twitter account for the operation, which continued to urge users to participate on Thursday.

As of Wednesday the group appeared to have taken down several government websites, and was planning further attacks on an extensive list of government agencies.

In a message on Pastebin, members of the collective announced plans to send black faxes to Moroccan government fax machines in retribution for the arrests. Some of the targeted branches of government include the Royal Palace, the Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Justice and Freedoms, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Ministry of Economy and Finance, and the Ministry of Tourism.

In the Pastebin instructions, the group wrote “Send black faxes to morocco gov machines [sic]. This will perform a DoS of sorts on the fax machine. The all black background with white #nadorkiss will use up all of the faxes black ink cartriges in the machine. Costly and annoying.”

Group members added that the op was “realtively [sic] easy to engage and non-technical. It can even be done from your own home without the use of a fax machine.”

It’s not the first public demonstration activists have staged against the three teenagers’ arrests. In October, dozens of protesters organized a “kiss-in” outside of the Parliament building in Rabat, Al Jazeera reported.