An investigation by the Irish group Front Line Defenders and the non-profit digital rights group Access Now found that Bahraini Ebtisam al-Saegh and Jordanian Hala Ahed Deeb were illegally monitored by clients who hired the Israeli company.

The statement released by the two NGOs confirmed that the mobile phones of al-Saegh and Aheb Deeb were hacked on multiple occasions from August to November 2019 and since March 2021, respectively, using the aforementioned spyware.

The impact this has had on these two women is appalling and traumatic, given that the special services uses this as a weapon to intimidate, harass and stain reputations, as per the report.

The security investigators from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto stated that the violated privacy and the information collected on the activists could cause changes in their lives.

Ever since they discovered they have been subjected to espionage on their phones, they live in a state of anxiety and fear, as they fear the exposure of other activists and victims, whose families are in danger, in their words.

Last July, The Washington Post and other news outlets reported that at least 50,000 phone numbers of human rights activists, journalists, politicians, and lawyers around the world had been hacked by Israeli spyware.

pgh/llp/jha/arc