A new investigation into the use of Pegasus spyware to hack Bahraini activists’ devices is adding another notch to the NSO Group’s dismal record of facilitating human rights abuses by oppressive regimes. Access Now reiterates the call for urgent action to hold the surveillance industry and governments accountable.
Following the latest damning revelations of the Pegasus Project, a new report by Citizen Lab and Red Line for Gulf, From Pearl to Pegasus: Bahraini Government Hacks Activists with NSO Group Zero-Click iPhone Exploits, supported by Access Now, discloses how Pegasus spyware was used by the Bahraini government to successfully target nine Bahraini activists between June 2020 and February 2021.
The hacked activists include three members of Waad, a secular political society banned in 2017; three members of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, also banned by the government; one member of Al Wefaq, Bahrain’s largest opposition political society forcefully dissolved and assets frozen; and Yusuf Al-Jamri and Moosa Abd-Ali, two exiled Bahraini dissidents residing in London. Al- Jamri was tortured in 2017 by Bahrain’s National Security Apparatus.