The Guardian newspaper on 20 December revealed that the former head of a panel appointed by the United Nations to investigate possible war crimes in Yemen had his phone hacked in August 2019 by spyware made by an Israeli company.
According to an investigative report by The Guardian, Kamel Jendoubi, who at the time was the head of the now disbanded Group of Eminent Experts (GEE) on Yemen, was targeted by the infamous Pegasus spyware made by the now disgraced Israeli NSO group.
The report is based on the results of a thorough examination of Jendoubi’s phone by Amnesty International IT experts and members of the Toronto University’s Citizen Lab.
The results of the investigation indicated that Jendoubi’s phone was targeted a few weeks before his team published the findings of their investigation. The investigation exposed numerous war crimes and violations of international law committed by the Saudi-led coalition.
According to The Guardian report, Jendoubi was targeted by the Saudi intelligence services.
The GEE was disbanded in October 2021 after the UN Human Rights Council voted against extending the mandate of the investigation. It was later revealed that Saudi Arabia used threats and bribes to sway countries to vote against extending the mandate.
The group was created in 2017 by the UN to investigate possible war crimes in Yemen. Saudi Arabia initially appeared to support the team but turned against it when the investigation started exposing the atrocities the Saudi-led coalition was committing against the people of Yemen.
Saudi Arabia reportedly also used the same spyware to monitor and track Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was murdered in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
For a long time, Saudi Arabia was one of NSO’s biggest clients. The Israeli firm claims that it terminated its relationship with Riyadh earlier this year when it discovered that the spyware was being ‘abused.’
In early November 2021, the US government placed NSO on a trade blacklist for what the Biden administration called ”acting contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.”
Pegasus was reportedly used to hack the phones of senior US diplomats and officials.
On 24 November, US technology giant Apple launched a lawsuit against NSO for attacking iphone devices with the Pegasus spyware.