NSO Group Sued by Khashoggi’s Widow for Alleged Phone Hacking
According to a lawsuit filed by the widow of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group’s spyware was utilized to monitor her messages in the period preceding her husband’s murder.
In a civil lawsuit filed Thursday in Northern Virginia, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said NSO had “deliberately targeted” her equipment and “caused her tremendous harm both through the tragic loss of her husband and her own loss of safety, privacy, and autonomy.”
The NSO initially said it had not seen the lawsuit. When the company was sent a copy, it did not immediately respond. The company – which markets surveillance technology to intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies around the world – has previously denied that its technology was used to hack Khashoggi. He was a Washington Post columnist who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
In 2021, US intelligence concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation to capture or kill Khashoggi. The Saudi Arabian government has denied the involvement of the crown prince and insists that Khashoggi’s murder was a heinous crime committed by a group of thugs.
Saudi Arabia’s use of the Pegasus spying tool has come up in other controversial cases. Last year, Reuters reported that an attempt by Saudi authorities to use Pegasus against Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul failed, allowing investigators to uncover thousands of other victims and triggering a series of legal and government actions.
The US government has placed restrictions on doing business with NSO over human rights concerns, and the company faces legal action over its spying services, including from Apple Inc and WhatsApp owner Meta Platforms Inc.
