InvestigationThe investigation carried out by the “Project Pegasus” allows to affirm that the phones of several relatives of the Saudi opponent were infected by the spyware before and after the murder of this one, in Istanbul in 2018.
The entourage of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi columnist for Washington post assassinated on October 2, 2018, was under surveillance. Several months of an investigation by Forbidden Stories and sixteen media outlets, including Washington post and The world, allow to affirm that two intimate women of the victim were targeted by Pegasus. A technical analysis even shows the presence of this spyware in the phone of one of them a few days after the assassination.
NSO Group, the Israeli company that markets this ultra-sophisticated spyware, has always claimed that its tool was never used to monitor Mr. Khashoggi or his family. Yet the phone of Hanan El-Atr, an Egyptian flight attendant whom Mr. Khashoggi had fallen in love with, was the subject of attempted Pegasus infections. Four text messages containing links which, if clicked, would have allowed the spyware to penetrate the phone, were sent to him in November 2017 and April 2018, several months before the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Due to technical limitations specific to Android, the software that powers his phone, it was not possible to determine whether the device had actually been infected.
“Jamal told me that it could happen”
At the time she was targeted by Pegasus, Mme El-Atr remembers meeting Jamal Khashoggi three times and exchanging numerous messages and calls with him. He had taught her to juggle the different chat applications, thinking that he was outsmarting the surveillance. “Jamal told me it could happen, remembers Mme El-Atr, from the United States, after learning about the hack. It makes me think that [les espions] knew everything that happened to Jamal through me ”, she continues, recounting that at the time, she often put her phone on the coffee table in her living room. Pegasus can not only suck content from a phone, but also turn it, invisibly, into a microphone.
Hatice Cengiz, Turkish fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi, was also a victim of Pegasus, a few days after the assassination of the journalist. It was she who accompanied him to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on the day of his death, and his phone was infected several times the following week, according to a technical analysis conducted by Amnesty International. The first infection took place four days after the murder. “I’m a bit shocked. I expected it, but I’m angry. I want to be a normal person like everyone else. All that terrifies me ”, reacted the young woman by learning that she had been spied on. Jamal Khashoggi’s phone was donated by Mr.me Cengiz to Turkish authorities after the journalist’s death. The latter, who still hold the device, refuse to say if it has been hacked, due to the ongoing judicial investigation.
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