RIYADH (Middle East Eye) – A UN investigator, who was probing war crimes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, was targeted with spyware made by the Zionist regime’s NSO Group, a forensic analysis of his device has found.
Kamel Jendoubi, a former Tunisian minister who served as the chairman of the now defunct Group of Eminent Experts in Yemen (GEE), was targeted in August 2019, experts at Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto have found.
Data suggests that Jendoubi was selected as a potential surveillance target by Saudi Arabia, the Guardian reported on Monday.
The kingdom was a longtime client of NSO before it was dropped earlier this year after reports that it had abused the surveillance tool.
The targeting is said to have taken place just weeks before Jendoubi and the GEE, a panel mandated by the UN to investigate war crimes, released a damning report into the actions of the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war, according to the British newspaper.
Many of the violations “can lead to the conviction of persons for war crimes if referred to an independent and competent tribunal” concluded the investigators, who also called on the international community to refrain from selling arms to the various parties in the war.
Jendoubi’s phone number was on a list of 50,000 phone numbers that appear to be targets identified by NSO’s clients to be spied upon using its Pegasus software.
The leaked numbers formed the basis of an investigation earlier this year by Amnesty International, Forbidden Stories and a group of international media organizations.
Named the Pegasus Project, the investigation found that the spyware was used in hacks of smartphones belonging to journalists, officials, human rights activists and political leaders.
Jendoubi, who has served as a member and president of several human rights associations, told the Pegasus Project that the targeting of his phone marked the actions of a “rogue state”.
“There are no other words. As international investigators, we are supposed to be at least protected,” he said.
Enjoying complete arms, logistical, and political support from the United States, Saudi Arabia and a number of its allies started a war against Yemen in March 2015.
The military campaign has been seeking to restore power to Yemen’s former Washington- and Riyadh-aligned officials.
The war has stopped way short of the goal, while killing tens of thousands of Yemenis in the process and pushing the entire Yemen close to the brink of outright famine.