BOSTON: French President Emmanuel Macron leads a list of 14 current or former heads of state, including Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who may have been targeted for hacking by clients of the notorious Israeli spyware firm NSO Group, Amnesty International said Tuesday.
“The unprecedented revelation ... should send a chill down the spine of world leaders,” Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said in a statement.
Among potential targets found on a list of 50,000 phone numbers leaked to Amnesty and the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories include Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and Barham Salih of Iraq. King Mohammed VI of Morocco and three current prime ministers — Imran Khan of Pakistan, Mustafa Madbouly of Egypt and Saad Eddine El Othmani of Morocco — are also on the list, The Washington Post reported.
The Post said none of the heads of state would offer their smartphones for forensic testing that might have detected whether they were infected by NSO’s military-grade Pegasus spyware. Thirty-seven phones identified in the investigation were either breached or shows signs of attempted infection, it has reported.
The Post and 16 other members of a global media consortium were granted access to the leaked list. Another member, the French daily Le Monde, determined that 15 members of the French government may have been among potential targets with Macron in 2019.
Following first reports by consortium members on Sunday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said it was investigating the suspected widespread use of NSO’s military-grade Pegasus spyware to target journalists, human rights activists and politicians in multiple countries.
Also Sunday, Amnesty released a forensic analysis of the alleged targeting that showed Amazon Web Services was hosting NSO infrastructure. In response, Amazon said it shut down NSO accounts that were “confirmed to be supporting the reported hacking activity.” Amazon said the accounts had violated its terms of use.
Another US company identified by Amnesty as hosting NSO servers was DigitalOcean. When contacted by The Associated Press, DigitalOcean neither confirmed nor denied whether it had identified or cut off such servers.
“All of the infrastructure outlined in the Amnesty report is no longer on DigitalOcean,” it said Tuesday, without elaborating, in an emailed statement.
Le Monde said the phone numbers for Macron and the then-government members were among thousands allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance. In this case, the client was an unidentified Moroccan security service, according to Le Monde.
Consortium members said they were able to link more than 1,000 numbers in 50 countries on the list with individuals, including more than 600 politicians and government officials and 189 journalists.
Also on the list were phone numbers in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Morocco and Rwanda, the consortium reported.
An official in Macron’s office said authorities would investigate Le Monde’s report, and if the targeting is proven, it would be “extremely grave.”
Le Monde quoted NSO as saying the French president was never targeted by its clients.
NSO Group has denied that it ever maintained “a list of potential, past or existing targets.” It called the Forbidden Stories report “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories.”
The source of the leak — and how it was authenticated — has not been disclosed. While a phone number’s presence in the data does not mean an attempt was made to hack a device, the consortium said it was confident the data indicated potential targets of NSO’s government clients.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement Tuesday that it opened an investigation into a raft of potential charges, including violation of privacy, illegal use of data and illegally selling spyware.
As is common under French law, the investigation doesn’t name a suspected perpetrator but is aimed at determining who might eventually be sent to trial. It was prompted by a legal complaint by two journalists and French investigative website Mediapart.
Multiple lawsuits by alleged victims have been filed against NSO Group including by Facebook over the Israeli firm’s alleged hacking of its WhatsApp application.
Pakistani prime minister among 14 heads of states on potential spyware list
https://arab.news/637b7
Pakistani prime minister among 14 heads of states on potential spyware list
- Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and Barham Salih of Iraq on the list
- King Mohammed VI of Morocco and three current prime ministers are also on the list
Pakistan opposition to continue protest over ex-PM Khan’s health amid conflicting reports
- Pakistan’s government insists that the ex-premier’s eye condition has improved
- Khan’s personal doctor says briefed on his condition but cannot confirm veracity
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s opposition alliance on Monday vowed to continue their protest sit-in at parliament and demanded “clarity” over the health of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, following conflicting medical reports about his eye condition.
The 73-year-old former cricket star-turned-politician has been held at the high-security Adiala prison in Rawalpindi since 2023. Concerns arose about his health last week when a court-appointed lawyer, Barrister Salman Safdar, was asked to visit Khan at the jail to assess his living conditions. Safdar reported that Khan had suffered “severe vision loss” in his right eye due to central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO), leaving him with just 15 percent sight in the affected eye.
On Sunday, a team of doctors from various hospitals visited the prison to examine Khan’s eye condition, according to the Adiala jail superintendent, who later submitted his report in the court. On Monday, a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice Yahya Afridi observed that based on reports from the prison authorities and the amicus curiae, Khan’s “living conditions in jail do not presently exhibit any perverse aspects.” It noted that Khan had “generally expressed satisfaction with the prevailing conditions of his confinement” and had not sought facilities beyond the existing level of care.
Having carefully perused both reports in detail, the bench observed that their general contents and the overall picture emerging therefrom are largely consistent. The opposition alliance, which continued to stage its sit-in for a fourth consecutive day on Monday, held a meeting at the parliament building on Monday evening to deliberate on the emerging situation and discuss their future course of action.
“The sit-in will continue till there is clarity on the matter of [Khan's] health,” Sher Ali Arbab, a lawmaker from Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party who has been participating in the sit-in, told Arab News, adding that PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan and Opposition Leader in Senate Raja Nasir Abbas had briefed them about their meeting with doctors who had visited Khan on Sunday.
Speaking to reporters outside parliament, Gohar said the doctors had informed them that Khan’s condition had improved.
“They said, 'There has been a significant and satisfactory improvement.' With that satisfactory improvement, we also felt satisfied,” he said, noting that the macular thickness in Khan’s eye had reportedly dropped from 550 to 300 microns, a sign of subsiding swelling.
Gohar said the party did not want to politicize Khan’s health.
“We are not doctors, nor is this our field,” he said, noting that Khan’s personal physician in Lahore, Dr. Aasim Yusuf, and his eye specialist Dr. Khurram Mirza had also sought input from the Islamabad-based medical team.
“Our doctors also expressed satisfaction over the report.”
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS
Despite Gohar’s cautious optimism, Khan’s personal physician, Dr. Yusuf, issued a video message on Monday, saying he could neither “confirm nor deny the veracity” of the government’s claims.
“Because I have not seen him myself and have not been able to participate in his care... I’m unable to confirm what we have been told,” Yusuf said.
He appealed to authorities to grant him or fellow physician, Dr. Faisal Sultan, immediate access to Khan, arguing that the ex-premier should be moved to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad for specialist care.
Speaking to Arab News, PTI’s central information secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram said Khan’s sister and their cousin, Dr. Nausherwan Burki, will speak to media on Tuesday to express their views about the situation.
The government insists that Khan’s condition has improved.
“His eye [condition] has improved and is better than before,” State Minister Talal Chaudhry told the media in a brief interaction on Monday.
“The Supreme Court of Pakistan is involved, and doctors are involved. What medicine he receives, whether he needs to be hospitalized or sent home, these decisions are made by doctors. Neither lawyers nor any political party will decide this.”
