Khashoggi’s widow sues Israeli firm over spyware she says ruined her life
The Israeli spyware firm NSO Group destroyed the life of Hanan Elatr, the wife of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, forcing her to live in fear and isolation, never able to safely return to, or even visit, her family in Egypt or have a normal life, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia where Elatr lives and works as she awaits approval of her request for political asylum, asserts that NSO infected her cellphone with the Pegasus software to spy on him. It asks for unspecified damages.
The lawsuit relies heavily on facts uncovered in 2021 by an international consortium of news outlets that included The Washington Post and was led by Paris-based Forbidden Stories that detailed Pegasus’s use against journalists, politicians and dissidents. The lawsuit also cites pioneering forensic work by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and Amnesty International’s Security Lab.
An NSO spokesperson said the company had not received a copy of the lawsuit and would respond “in the relevant channels.” NSO has said previously it developed the spyware to track criminals and terrorists, but reporting showed that it was often deployed against opposition political parties, human rights activists and even disloyal family members. [Continue reading…]