A lawsuit filed against the Pegasus spy program
The Gulf Center for Human Rights announced filing a complaint in France against the Israeli software company, NSO Group, which sold the Pegasus spyware to the UAE and other repressive countries.
The human rights centre said that the Israeli company is responsible for the harm caused to human rights defenders in the Middle East and North Africa region and beyond.
It stated that some of these human rights defenders, including journalists, bloggers and social media activists, were already known to have been targeted by Pegasus. Others were recently uncovered by Project Pegasus, an Amnesty International investigation and Forbidden Stories.
After presenting the case to the French public prosecutor, human rights lawyers William Bourdon and Vincent Braingart said, “It is imperative that, throughout the Arab world, that people speak out loud about the incredible journalists and human rights activists who have been spied on, and that the perpetrators of these violations are brought to justice.”
The complaint notes that “these discoveries also come at a time when press freedom is under threat worldwide, particularly in the context of the escalating crises due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The complaint asserted that NSO Group’s sale of the Pegasus program to repressive governments, led by the UAE, “undermines freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and confidentiality of sources.”
Among those targeted by NSO Group’s Pegasus program is Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights defender currently serving a ten-year prison sentence in Al Sadr Prison. It is known that he was targeted in 2016 before his arrest in March 2017.
The complaint mentions Mansoor and two other human rights defenders who were not previously known to have been targeted, namely Emirati human rights defender Alaa Al-Siddiq, Emirati activist and executive director of the ALQST human rights organization, who was killed in a traffic accident in June 2021, and Saudi human rights defender Yahya Al-Asiri, Founder of the instalment.
Al-Siddiq and Al-Asiri have moved to the UK to escape persecution and have been targeted for their peaceful and legitimate human rights activities online. They have also been involved in projects and activities with the Gulf Center for Human Rights.
Last week, two more complaints were filed in France against the NSO Group, one by MediaPart newspaper.
Bourdon and Braingart submitted the other complaint on behalf of Reporters Without Borders and journalists with dual French and Moroccan nationals, Omar Brouksi and Maati Monjib.
In a joint appeal led by the Monitoring Coalition in the Middle East and North Africa, the Gulf Center for Human Rights, Access Now and others protested, “the shameful targeting of hundreds of journalists and activists in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other countries, many of whom had long been subjected to surveillance, harassment, arrest, and torture,” and the assassination.
