"Ghanem Al-Masarir, a London-based comic whose popular YouTube channel featured videos of him criticizing Saudi Arabia, while earning him millions of viewers, sued the Saudi government in 2019 after claiming his phone was targeted a year earlier with Pegasus, a mobile spyware sold by NSO Group exclusively to governments. Al-Masari was also physically assaulted in London in 2018, around the time his phone was targeted."
""There is a compelling basis for concluding that [al-Masarir's] iPhones were hacked by Pegasus spyware which resulted in the exfiltration of data from those mobile phones," wrote Justice Pushpinder Saini in his ruling. The judge said that the hacking was "directed or authorised" by the Saudi government or its agents. Justice Saini also found that the Saudi government was probably responsible for Al-Masarir's assault."
"Saudi Arabia rebuffed Al-Masarir's legal challenge, saying it had state immunity from prosecution, a claim it had successfully argued in an earlier case in which the Saudi leader was accused of orchestrating the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Turkey. But the High Court rejected Saudi's claim of immunity in Al-Masarir's legal case, prompting the Kingdom to take no part in the litigation going forward, according to Reuters, which first reported the court ruling."
Ghanem Al-Masarir, a London-based satirist and human rights activist, was awarded more than £3 million by the London High Court after the court found compelling evidence that his phones were hacked with Pegasus spyware. He sued Saudi Arabia in 2019, alleging Pegasus targeted his devices in 2018, around the time he was physically assaulted in London. Justice Pushpinder Saini found that the hacking resulted in exfiltration of data, was directed or authorised by the Saudi government or its agents, and that Saudi was probably responsible for the assault. Saudi invoked state immunity but the court rejected that claim and the Kingdom took no further part in the litigation.
Read at TechCrunch
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