AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – A
Palestinian human rights group on Monday urged the United Nations to investigate reports that Palestinian activists in the West Bank were hacked by Zionist technology firm NSO Group’s spyware.
“We call on the United Nations to launch an investigation to disclose the party that stood behind using this program on the phones of human rights activists, a move that put their lives at risk,” Tahseen Elayyan, of Al-Haq Organization for Human Rights, said in Ramallah.
The recently backlisted notorious Zionist NSO spyware was used to target the phones of six Palestinian human rights groups that were controversially declared terrorist organizations by Zionist war minister Benny Gantz, an investigation by Front Line Defenders (FLD) has found.
FLD, a Dublin-based human rights group, investigated 75 iPhones and found that six devices were hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. FLD’s findings were independently confirmed with “high confidence” by technical experts at Citizen Lab and Amnesty International’s security lab, the world’s leading authorities on such hacks.
Three of the six victims that consented to being identified are Ghassan Halaika: Field researcher and human rights defender working for Al-Haq; U.S. citizen Ubai Al-Aboudi: Executive Director at Bisan Center for Research and Development and Salah Hamouri: Lawyer and field researcher at Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association based in Jerusalem.
Hamouri, who is a citizen of France, was notified of the Zionist regime’s minister of interior’s decision to revoke his permanent residency in Al-Quds and deport him.
Al-Haq contacted FLD a few days before being blacklisted by the Zionist regime about the device of an Al-Quds-based staff member and a possible infection with spyware. Front Line Defenders immediately conducted a technical investigation, and found that the device had been infected in July 2020, with spyware sold by NSO Group.
FLD began investigating other devices belonging to members of the six Palestinian civil society organizations designated terrorists and found that five additional devices were hacked with the same spyware.
FLD called on “states, international bodies, corporations and law enforcement authorities to clearly and unequivocally reject the terrorism charges brought against Palestinian human rights organizations and human rights defenders.”
In July, a global investigation by the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde and other news outlets reported that Pegasus spyware has been used to monitor human rights defenders, journalists and politicians around the world.