The United Kingdom High Court issued an order on October 11, 2024, granting permission to a Saudi human rights defender who lives in the UK to bring a case that accuses the government of Saudi Arabia of using spyware against him, Human Rights Watch said today. Yahya Assiri, a prominent Saudi human rights defender, says that Saudi authorities targeted him with spyware between 2018 and 2020.
The High Court order allows Assiri to bring his legal challenge against Saudi Arabia through the UK's diplomatic channels. Assiri filed a legal claim against Saudi Arabia on May 28 for targeting him with spyware, claiming that the Saudi government harassed him, misused his private information, and wrongfully interfered with his mobile phones.
"The Saudi government has been accused of using the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware to monitor and silence Saudi human rights defenders for years with impunity," said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Assiri's case before the British courts is an important step toward holding the Saudi government to account after years of transnational repression and repeated rights violations."
Critics of the Saudi government and dissidents have publicly raised concerns about Saudi authorities' use of commercially available surveillance technologies to hack into their devices and online accounts. In his claim, Assiri said that the Saudi government targeted his devices with spyware multiple times between 2018 and 2020.
Assiri is a prominent Saudi human rights activist who founded the London-based Saudi human rights organization, ALQST, and was a founding member of the National Assembly Party, a Saudi opposition party. In 2013, he left Saudi Arabia for the UK out of fear for his safety due to his human rights work in the country and was granted asylum in the UK in 2017.
The UK High Court's action is an important step toward accountability for the Saudi government's alleged attacks against Assiri, Human Rights Watch said. Governments should ban the sale, export, transfer, and use of surveillance technology until human rights safeguards are in place.
In 2018, Citizen Lab, an academic research center based in Canada, found that suspicious messages received by Assiri appeared to represent attempts to infect him "with the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware." Assiri and his lawyers say that the Saudi government infected another one of Assiri's mobile devices with spyware developed by QuaDream in 2018. They said that in July 2020, another of Assiri's devices was hacked using Pegasus.
Pegasus is developed and sold by the Israel-based company NSO Group. NSO Group says it only licenses Pegasus to governments. NSO Group's clients surreptitiously deliver the Pegasus spyware onto the targeted person's mobile phones. Once Pegasus is on the device, the client is able to turn it into a powerful surveillance tool by gaining complete access to its camera, calls, media, microphone, email, text messages, and other functions, enabling surveillance of the person targeted and their contacts.
"Inside Saudi Arabia, the authorities silence people through arrest and prosecution, preventing them from speaking out against corruption and repression," Assiri said in a statement about the case. "Outside, they employ hacking and other forms of transnational repression. I want to use this legal action as a means to put pressure on the Saudi authorities."
Monika Sobiecki, partner at Bindmans LLP, the firm that filed the claim on behalf of Assiri, said in a statement that "the abuse of my client's privacy rights now formally calls for an explanation from the State."
Saudi authorities have repeatedly sought to identify anonymous dissidents and spy on Saudi citizens through their digital communications. In 2018, Citizen Lab concluded that a Canada-based Saudi activist's phone was infected with spyware, allowing full access to personal files, messages, contacts, microphone, and cameras.
Another investigation published by Citizen Lab in January 2020 also revealed that two other exiled Saudi dissidents, a New York Times journalist, and an Amnesty International staff member had been targeted. In July 2021, the Pegasus Project revealed that the Saudi government was possibly one of NSO Group's government clients for its Pegasus spyware.
Pegasus spyware has compromised the devices of human rights activists, including staff from Human Rights Watch, journalists, politicians, diplomats, and others in violation of their rights, underscoring the urgent need to regulate the global trade in surveillance technology, Human Rights Watch said. All governments should ban the sale, export, transfer, and use of all commercial spyware until human rights safeguards are in place.
"Saudi authorities have for years been using spyware against human rights defenders living in other countries who seek to document the worst of the government's abuses," Shea said. "This case in an important step toward accountability and justice."
