[Unofficial translation by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre via Google]

"UAE used “Pegasus” spyware to surveil the Financial Times editor-in-chief & Khashoggi wife phones" 19 June 2021

Leaks of phone numbers selected for monitoring through the Israeli Pegasus program revealed that the UAE chose the phone number of the editor of the "Financial Times" and journalists in the "Wall Street Journal" and "The Economist" magazine as potential targets for espionage.

The Guardian newspaper revealed that Abu Dhabi used the Israeli spyware program Pegasus, produced by the NSO Group, to try to surveil the phone of Lebanese-born journalist Rola Khalaf; editor-in-chief of the Financial Times. Khalaf was appointed last year as the first female editor in the newspaper's history, and she is one of 180 journalists whose phones were exposed to hacking through the Israeli program.

...It is believed that Rola Khalaf was targeted by Abu Dhabi in 2018, when she was deputy editor-in-chief. Her phone number appeared in the leak of numbers selected as potential targets for surveillance. But the appearance of the number in the list does not mean that her phone was hacked or there was an attempted hack. The leaks showed that the UAE chose 10,000 numbers as potential targets for hacking. But the main product of the "NOS Group" gives customers the opportunity to extract photos, messages, emails, record calls and activate in a secret way the microphone on iPhone and Android devices.....