London’s High Court awarded a Saudi satirist and human rights activist more than £3 million (US$4.1 million) in damages on Monday after finding “substantial evidence” that his phone had been hacked with government-grade spyware.
Ghanem Al-Masarir, a London-based comic whose popular YouTube channel featured videos of himself criticizing Saudi Arabia while gaining him millions of viewers, sued the Saudi government in 2019 after claiming his phone was targeted a year earlier with Pegasusa mobile spyware sold by NSO Group exclusively to governments.
Al-Masari was also physically attacked in London in 2018, around the time his phone was targeted. He blamed agents working for Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, of masterminding the attack. Real-world attacks are often used in conjunction with digital surveillance tools like Pegasus, researchers have found.
The comic and activist said the attacks on his phone and the physical assault left him deeply depressed, ending his YouTube career.
Saudi Arabia rejected Al-Masarir’s legal challenge, saying it had state immunity from prosecutiona claim he had successfully argued in an earlier case in which the Saudi leader was accused of orchestrating the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey.
However, the Supreme Court rejected Saudi Arabia’s request for immunity in Al-Masarir’s legal case, preventing the Kingdom from taking part in the trial in the future, according to Reuters, which reported for the first time the court decision.
“There is a persuasive basis for concluding this [al-Masarir’s] The iPhones were hacked by the Pegasus spyware, which resulted in the exfiltration of data from these mobile phones,” Justice Pushpinder Saini wrote. in his decision.
The judge said the hacking was “directed or authorized” by the Saudi government or its agents. Judge Saini also found that the government of Saudi Arabia was possibly responsible for the Al-Masarir attack.
It is unclear whether Saudi Arabia will pay Al-Masarir or whether the government plans to appeal.
A representative for NSO Group, which makes and sells access to the Pegasus spyware, did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Neither did a representative of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, DC
