“The Guardian”: Saudi Arabia spied on “head of the expert committee on Yemen” through the Israeli “NSO”

The British newspaper “The Guardian” published, on Monday, a report revealing that the phone of Tunisian Kamal Jendoubi, head of the international expert committee investigating violations of the war on Yemen, (which has been canceled), hacked by an Israeli spy network, as a new resounding scandal for the coalition of aggression, and the Saudi regime, in particular.

According to the newspaper, the espionage operation “occurred only weeks before Jendoubi and his team of experts issued a report concluding that the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war had committed serious violations of international humanitarian law that could lead to criminal responsibility for war crimes.”

The Guardian said: An investigation is conducted in cooperation with other media outlets found that Jendoubi’s phone number appears in a list of leaked data in the “Pegasus” espionage project of the Israeli company (NSO), which has recently emerged many scandals regarding its use to spy for Gulf regimes led by the Saudi Arabia and UAE.

The report added that “the leaked list included numbers of individuals who were chosen by government agents of the Israeli NSO group, as potential targets for monitoring,” stressing that “the data indicates that Jendoubi was chosen as a possible target for monitoring by Saudi Arabia.

According to the report, Jendoubi said: “We have learned that [the committee] may have been targeted since our 2018 report was published”, “The report shocked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They did not expect such results,” referring to what the report documented of war crimes and grave violations committed by the coalition of aggression led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE and its followers in Yemen.

Jendoubi added: “They used all their propaganda and media to tarnish our reputation, even the 2021 vote that ended our mission.”
He said that targeting his phone reveals the methods of a country that does not care about “the minimum international obligations and rules.”

The Guardian said that experts at Amnesty International’s security lab and Citizen Lab, who search for sophisticated digital surveillance attacks, found traces of Pegasus on Jendoubi’s mobile phone, which are also linked to a timestamp in the database indicating when the number was chosen.

Experts said that the analysis showed that “one of the NSO agents tried to hack the device.”
The Guardian had mentioned in a report in early December that the pressure exerted by Saudi Arabia; To push members of the United Nations Human Rights Council to vote against renewing the mandate of the Panel of Experts, included “exploiting access to the kingdom’s holy places,” as Saudi Arabia threatened that it would not recognize Indonesian coronavirus vaccination certificates for Indonesians traveling on the pilgrimage to Mecca.

The newspaper also mentioned that the UAE was involved in this campaign of intimidation and enticement, and tempted the State of Senegal to sign a memorandum of understanding to establish a joint Emirati-Senegalese business council, aimed at strengthening cooperation between the two countries, which happened only a week after the vote.

This information constitutes a resounding scandal that confirms the continued international disregard for the crimes of the coalition of aggression which represents clear complicity and blatant encouragement to Riyadh and its sponsors to double its brutal violations and disregard for international laws.