London-Sana
Dozens of human rights organizations have called on the European Union to impose sanctions on the Israeli spying company (Nso), which, through military-grade espionage systems, especially through the Pegasus program, targeted activists, journalists and politicians in many countries.
The organizations called for taking measures to ban any sale, transfer, export or import with the company.
And the British Guardian newspaper reported that 86 human rights organizations, including (Access Now), (Amnesty International) and (Digital Rights Foundation) sent a joint letter to the European Union’s High Representative for Policy and Security (Josep Borrell) stating that the union’s sanctions regime gives him the power to target Entities responsible for violations or abuses of deep concern regarding the objectives of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, including violations of the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association or freedom of opinion and expression.
“These rights have been repeatedly violated using techniques provided by NSO,” the letter said, referring to the conclusions of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion who found that the use of spyware by governments could “also facilitate executions, extrajudicial killings or Enforced disappearance of persons.
The letter pointed out that the Pegasus spying system produced by the Israeli company was used to hack the devices of six Palestinian human rights activists.
The Guardian indicated that the movement of human rights organizations comes after an investigation by the newspaper and 15 other media organizations last summer under the name (Project Pegasus), in coordination with the French media organization (Forbidden Stories), and revealed the ways in which Pegasus was used to target journalists, human rights activists and other members of civil society in many countries.
Last July, CNN revealed that 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, executives and two women linked to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was liquidated at his country's consulate in Turkey, were targeted (with military-grade spy systems) that the Israeli company licensed to governments.
The network indicated that (several members of Arab royal families, at least 65 chief executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, more than 600 politicians and government officials, including ministers, diplomats, military and state security officers, and prime ministers whose names appeared on the list).
