"Democracy campaigner to sue Saudi Arabia over Pegasus and QuaDream spyware in UK court" 23 October 2024

A pro-democracy and human rights activist has won the right to bring legal proceedings against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in a UK court after his phones were hacked by surveillance software.

The High Court in London has issued an order permitting campaigner Yahya Assiri to file a legal claim for damages against Saudi Arabia after the Saudi government used Israeli spyware to place him under surveillance.

The case is understood to be the first involving the use of QuaDream, an Israeli-developed spyware that targets iPhones, to reach the High Court...

...Assiri, who has lived in England since 2013, is a founding member and former secretary general of the Saudi opposition National Assembly Party, and the founder of ALQST, which promotes and defends human rights in Saudi Arabia. He has worked with opponents of the Saudi regime including journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, and Saudi poet and activist Abdullah Hamid Ali al-Hamid, who died in detention in Riyadh in 2020.

According to the complaint, between 2018 and 2020, Assiri’s mobile devices were targeted and infected by Pegasus and QuaDream spyware, traces of which were detected by independent analysis by the Citizen Lab based at the University of Toronto in Canada...

...Now-disbanded Israeli company QuaDream offered spyware exploits, malware and infrastructure marketed under the name, Reign. There is little publicly available information about QuaDream, and it’s unclear whether the spyware is still in use. The software uses “zero-click” exploits to allow it to be installed on a device without requiring the user to click on a link. Like Pegasus, the spyware is able to intercept and record voice calls, activate the microphone of an infected device, take photographs, search and access files and databases, and track the users’ location.

Assiri’s case is the second to be brought against Saudi Arabia in the UK courts over Pegasus spyware... Al-Masarir, represented by Leigh Day, is claiming psychological damage resulting from the misuse of private information and harassment after the Saudi government targeted his phone with Pegasus spyware acquired from Israeli tech company NSO Group...