The widow of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has said in a lawsuit that surveillance software built by Israeli surveillance company NSO Group was used to spy on her messages in the months leading up to her husband’s death, i24NEWS reported Saturday.
The civil suit was filed on Thursday in the Northern District of Virginia, according to the report. In the suit, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said that NSO “intentionally targeted” her devices and “caused her immense harm, both through the tragic loss of her husband and through her own loss of safety, privacy, and autonomy.”
NSO, which markets surveillance technology to intelligence agencies and law enforcement around the world, has previously denied that its technology was used to hack Khashoggi.
Khashoggi was killed and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. Saudi Arabia admitted that Khashoggi was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, after initially denying Turkish claims that he was murdered.
An intelligence report released in February of 2021 by the Biden administration said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved Khashoggi”s murder.
NSO has come under fire over its Pegasus spyware, which is designed to breach mobile phones and extract vast amounts of information from them, including text messages, passwords, locations and microphone and camera recordings.
The company markets the technology as a tool to target criminals but many cases have been discovered worldwide of governments using it against dissidents, journalists and political opponents.
In one case, the Finnish foreign ministry said it had detected Pegasus in several phones used by its diplomats abroad.
The Finnish announcement followed a report in The New York Times which said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked to ensure that Saudi Arabia would be able to use the Pegasus software, around the time that the Abraham Accords were signed with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The US Commerce Department recently blacklisted NSO Group, prohibiting it from using American technology in its operations.
Apple has sued the Israeli firm, seeking a permanent injunction to ban NSO Group from using Apple software, services, or devices.
