WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Detained Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri has filed a complaint in France against the Zionist regime’s spyware firm NSO Group for having “illegally infiltrated” his mobile phone.
Hamouri was one of several activists whose phones were hacked using the Pegasus malware, according to a report in November by human rights groups.
The complaint was jointly lodged by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Human Rights League (LDH) and Hamouri on Tuesday with the prosecutor of the Paris judicial court, accusing NSO of having illegally infiltrated his phone.
Hamouri is currently serving a four-month term of so-called administrative detention ordered by a Zionist military court in March over the accusation of being a “threat to security.”
Lawyer Patrick Baudouin, FIDH honorary president, said, “Obviously, this is an operation that is part of a largely political framework given the harassment Hamouri has been subjected to for years and the attacks on human rights defenders in Israel.”
Baudouin told AFP that French courts are “competent” to judge the case because the Palestinian activist holds French nationality and his phone was infected with Pegasus prior to his travel to France from April to May 2021.
According to Palestinian NGO Addameer, Hamouri has been targeted by the occupying regime authorities over the past years, made subject to arbitrary arrests, administrative detention without charge, and travel bans.
In October 2021, the regime’s interior minister issued a decision to revoke Hamouri’s permanent Al-Quds residence card.
The Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition (PDRC) said in a statement that it supported the legal action against NSO “for illegally infiltrating the phone of Salah Hamouri, a violation that was initiated in Palestine and continued on French soil. It constitutes a violation of the right to privacy under French law and international human rights conventions.”