Many of us remember how Jamal Kashoggi was tortured to death in the most slow and medically precise way by a top Saudi surgeon with a team of assistants. It is believed MBS instructed this manner of death to the team who carried it out. But it reflects how hatred mixed with intense fear can become so intense over time that it can twist the mind of a human being to actually take pleasure in such sadistic acts.
The history of humankind is littered with facts of horrific cruelty to our fellow man. In the 21st century we add the menace of Spyware to track down our prey.
What did Jamal do to instil such fear and hatred?
It is a good moment to reflect on the duty to speak out against authoritarian rule. Our late colleague wrote on Sept. 18, 2017, that he hadn’t protested initially when some friends in Saudi Arabia were wrongly arrested, but then decided he must. “I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot.” For his principled stand, Khashoggi was drugged and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/01/honor-jamal-khashoggi-pursue-his-dream
And how was the trap laid? Jamal had fled to Washington, DC to protect his wife and family. He felt isolated and depressed that he could not tell the world about the unsettling events now happening in his beloved country.
He met a friend who supported him. She was a stewardess on Egyptian airlines. She suggested Jamal write for the Washington Post, thinking, no doubt, he would be safe working for such a prestigious news outlet.
He took up her advice and felt now he could help his country by exposing the deteriorating situation he considered was taking place under the new regime in Saudi.
She became his wife and, unknown to her, her phone was infected with Pegasus spyware. This enabled Jamal’s murderers to lure him to his place of execution, much to the outrage of the Turkish president once he learned his country had been used for such a horrific act of barbarity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/07/18/takeaways-nso-pegasus-project/
In reading the Pegasus book by Richard and Rigaud, the methodology to prove how this happened is described, and it took the courage, skill, determination and high risk endeavour to bring the facts about NSO spyware to light.
2023: The stunning Amnesty International Security Lab work published 2021, reappears in India:
And as fast as the Security Lab team raced to keep up with NSO intricate concealment of their spyware presence, the Security Lab still produced the evidence which was so profound and clear and could not be denied.
Jamal, like many journalists who try to free their country of oppressive and corrupt regimes, risk their lives because they love their country and, by speaking truth to power, hope to bring freedom to their people.
And what do we learn about the ‘white hat washing’ NSO carried out whilst in full knowledge its spyware was in the hands of well known human rights abusers such as in Azerbaijan, where the Aliyev government ranks in the bottom 15 percent of countries in the World Bank’s Control of Corruption in 2019? This was the year Pegasus was unleashed on victims such as Khadija, an Azeri journalist.
On September 10, 2019, three days after an attack on Khadija’s iPhone, NSO Group trumpeted its new corporate governance regime. This updated policy was designed to bring the company into “alignment with the UN Guiding Principles of Human Rights,” read the press release, “cementing the company’s existing industry-leading ethical business practices.” NSO announced the formation of a “Governance, Risk and Compliance Committee,” as well as a separate set of outside experts who could offer the company guidance on human rights issues: one former secretary and one former assistant secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, as well as a French diplomat who had been first secretary at the embassy in Tel Aviv and an ambassador to the US. NSO also announced the hiring of a new general counsel, Shmuel Sunray. Sunray went in with eyes wide open, he would tell reporters. “We understand the power of the tool, and we understand the impact of misuse of the tool,” he said not long after he started at NSO. “We’re trying to do the right thing . . . to find the right balance.” The newly announced policy and personnel were merely a codification of protocols already in place, according to NSO. There would still be a rigid vetting of all potential end users of NSO’s weapons-grade cybersurveillance system. Key to the process was a case-by-case risk analysis to determine the likelihood of misuse by any country seeking a license to deploy Pegasus. NSO’s attorneys and its compliance committee always took into account the country’s record on human rights, rule of law, freedom of the press and expression, and corruption. (NSO said it was aware of the “very strong relations between issues of corruption and the issues of human rights.”) The compliance team had a very good place to start their vetting procedure, which was the annual rankings assigned by at least seven different international indexes, including the World Bank’s Control of Corruption report and Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report.
‘Pegasus’, Laurent Richard, S Rigaud
Contrast the ‘oh so clean NSO human rights declaration’ with what happened to two Azeri citizens, one a journalist, the other a blogger:
To illustrate the ongoing threat to those who expose, even through satire, the wrongdoings of their government, Richard and Rigaud, in their Pagasus book, share the following:
news reports about the case of Mahammad Mirzali, a twenty-seven-year-old Azeri blogger who had fled Baku and settled in Nantes, France, 5,000 kilometers away. Mahammad thought he would be safe enough in France to continue to post messages critical of President Aliyev’s financial corruption and the bloody war in Armenia on his YouTube channel, Made in Azerbaijan. But the distance had not put Mahammad or his family beyond the reach of Azerbaijan. His parents also fled to France after his father and brother-in-law were threatened and encouraged to stifle Mahammad. His sister had suffered the indignation of having an illegal recording of one of her intimate moments circulated online, a shrill echo of the blackmail attempt on Khadija Ismayilova. Mahammad himself was shot at while sitting in a parked car in October 2020, and in March 2021, he was attacked in Nantes and stabbed ten to fourteen times—the medical reports released to the public were uncertain. (Aliyev has publicly stated that there is not enough evidence for him to deign to respond to what he called “groundless and biased accusations” that his government was responsible for the attacks on Mahammad. Three of the four men charged with the crime a year later, however, were Azeri nationals.) Mahammad Mirzali survived, after a six-hour surgery, only to receive a text a week later. “This is the last warning,” it read. “We can kill you without any problem. You’ve seen that we’re not afraid of anyone. . . . We’ll have you killed with a bullet to the head fired by a sniper.” The threats had continued into June, according to the latest reporting, and Donncha suspected they were probably ongoing. So when Amnesty International offered to relocate Claudio and Donncha from their homes to undisclosed safe houses for the week leading up to publication, both of them accepted. The attacks on the Azeri dissident were in Donncha’s head. “He’s writing satire about the [Aliyev] government, and the government is going to try to kill him, twice, in France,” Donncha says. “If the Azerbaijanis know that [the Pegasus Project] is going to come out, are they going to do anything to try to stop us? And it’s not just Azerbaijan.”
‘Pegasus’, Laurent Richard, S Rigaud
Let us not forget Armenian philanthropist, Ruben Vardanyan:
borderslynn 