Archive for the 'Human Rights Defenders' Category

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Israeli Court backs Oded Goldreich who wants to donate Israel Prize money to human rights NGOs

April 15, 2022
Israel Prize winner in mathematics and computer science Professor Oded Goldreich will be donating his prize money to five left-wing human rights organisations [@WeizmannScience/Twitter]

Times of Isrel (TOI ) on 14 April 2022 reports on Professor Oded Goldreich, a recent recipient of the Israel Prize in mathematics, wants to donate his NIS 75,000 ($23,350) in prize money to five human rights organizations, including Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem.

Goldreich, a professor of computer science at Israel’s Weizmann Institute, received the Israel Prize at the offices of the Education Ministry Monday, despite opposition from some government ministers and following a nearly year-long political saga over his alleged support for anti-Israel boycotts.

The five groups that will receive the prize money are Breaking the Silence, Standing Together, Kav LaOved, B’Tselem, and Adalah.

Breaking the Silence collects and publicizes mostly anonymous testimony of alleged IDF mistreatment of Palestinians. The organization has riled Israelis, and drawn ire from officials, who have challenged the authenticity of its anonymous claims and decried its work in international forums.

Standing Together supports and donates supplies to soldiers; Kav LaOved is a legal aid group for disadvantaged workers; B’Tselem documents alleged human rights violations in the West Bank; and Adalah is a legal center for Palestinians.

Last month, the High Court of Justice ruled that Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton must hand over the prize to Goldreich, following a petition against her refusal to give him the award filed by the members of the prize committee. The committee had initially awarded the honor to Goldreich last year.

The court ruling was a majority decision, with Justices Yael Willner and Yitzhak Amit siding with the appeal and Justice Noam Sohlberg opposing it.

Shasha-Biton had claimed that an academic boycott of Israel, which she said Goldreich supports, impacts freedom of speech. Amit ruled that “the harm to academic freedom of speech by withholding the prize from professor Goldreich is much worse.”

Denying the honor to a recognized academic over comments he made is “an invitation to monitor, track, and persecute academics in Israel,” Amit said. Shasha-Biton said at the time that she regretted the justices’ decision, but would respect it. She noted that since the court had previously said the education minister should decide the matter, it should have respected her decision.

“A person who calls for a boycott of an Israeli academic institution is not worthy of a state prize, no matter what his achievements or political views are,” she said.

Likud MK and former intelligence minister Eli Cohen tweeted that “Goldreich is the symptom. The root of the problem is the High Court of Justice.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/controversial-israel-prize-winner-to-donate-grant-money-to-human-rights-ngos/

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/skrb3h4eq

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220414-israel-prize-winner-to-donate-award-money-to-groups-fighting-to-end-the-occupation/

https://www.bollyinside.com/news/winner-of-divisive-israel-prize-to-award-grants-to-human-rights-organizations

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Why is the Harvard Administration so reluctant to speak up for Steven Donziger?

April 14, 2022

Rachel E. Carle, a second-year Master in Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, in an oped in the Crimson of 13 April 2022 (entitled Harvard Trains Human Rights Defenders and Then Abandons Them, wants to know why the Harvard Administration has not come out as fiercely to defend Steven Donziger as it has done for others. She makes a good point:

Harvard Law School alum Steven Donziger recently marked his 900th day in detention. Donziger represented victims of oil dumping in a landmark case against Chevron in Ecuador and has since faced serious intimidation and harassment, including mishandling of his trial. [I have written several posts about him, see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/steven-donziger/]

Here at Harvard, Law Professor Charles Nesson has steadfastly spoken out in Donziger’s defense. Harvard Law students joined a letter signed by peers at 55 leading law schools, calling for Donziger’s prosecution to be reviewed. In Fall 2021, with the support of the Human Rights Profession Interest Council at Harvard Kennedy School, I coordinated a petition for Harvard students and alumni to support Donziger that more than 1,600 people have signed onto. This public support is overwhelming, and continued pressure is needed in order for Donziger to achieve justice. So why hasn’t the Harvard administration spoken up?

The school is quick to parade its most controversial alumni. They have no qualms honoring alum Henry A. Kissinger ’50, who orchestrated widespread war crimes in Cambodia. They were eager to invite Harvard drop-out Mark Zuckerberg to give the College’s 2017 Commencement speech, shortly after Facebook’s incriminating role in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Harvard has shown that it is willing to take risks for certain kinds of alumni.

This makes their silence on human rights defenders all the more deafening. Harvard trains students to be leaders and to act courageously to create a better world. Many students in my program at the Harvard Kennedy School graduate into high-risk careers, combatting authoritarianism, fighting for indigenous rights, or working on environmental accountability. Graduates have been detained for their work, from the 1992 imprisonment of HKS alum Jeffrey G. Kitingan in Malaysia to the 2012 imprisonment of HKS alum Bakhtiyar Hajiyev in Azerbaijan.

Just last year, HKS alum Erendro Leichombam was detained in India for a Facebook post criticizing Bharatiya Janata Party members’ approach to Covid-19. While Harvard alumni launched a petition for his release, and the Harvard Graduate Student Union lent its public support, these actions could only go so far.

Harvard alumni have been targeted for their human rights work in the past and will continue to be in the future. They deserve more than one-off petitions and scrambling students. Harvard is one of the most powerful educational institutions in the world; surely we can do more.

These targeted alumni are a part of a larger story. 2020 was the deadliest year on record for environmental activists around the world, particularly for Indigenous people and the Global South. Of course, those who graduate from Harvard schools have privileges and protections not afforded to many. Donziger is a white American man with a Harvard Law degree who benefits from respectability politics, and we should critically consider why his case has received more attention than most.

But that is just it. The more we understand and leverage the connections between these cases, the more human rights defenders can receive the attention and advocacy they deserve. These are not isolated incidents. When the next HKS or HLS alum is inevitably threatened or detained, I hope we remember they are connected to a long lineage of targeted alumni and a vast community of targeted activists around the world.

Harvard has taken an important step with the Scholars at Risk program, established more than 20 years ago to offer respite to persecuted scholars, artists, and writers from around the world. Harvard should expand this commitment, devoting significant resources to the defense of human rights, with particular attention to indigenous, women, queer, poor, and otherwise marginalized activists.

It is time to support our alumni at risk, too. Harvard should develop contingency plans that allow the administration to evaluate a situation, get in touch with the detained alum’s close contacts, and consider a range of private and public support measures. At the very least, the administration should be receptive to student campaigns that request the school to make a public statement or intervene in support of a member of our community.

Harvard needs to take responsibility for the human rights defenders it trains. It needs to create a real, ongoing, accessible infrastructure of support. And it needs to start today.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/4/13/carle-harvard-human-rights-defenders/

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Human Rights Defender Angkhana Neelapaijit in Thailand harassed

April 14, 2022
Photo captured on a security camera of the alleged assailant, a woman wearing a mask and a black t-shirt.
Photo captured on a security camera of the alleged assailant, a woman wearing a mask and a black t-shirt. © 2022 Private

The authorities in Thailand should urgently investigate an incident intended to intimidate a prominent human rights defender, Human Rights Watch said on 13 April, 2022.

On April 12, 2022, at about 6 a.m., an unidentified assailant threw a pair of 9-inch-long scissors at the house of Angkhana Neelapaijit in Bangkok, making a hole in her front door. Security camera footage showed what appeared to be a woman wearing a face mask and a dark t-shirt with the Thai numeral 9 standing in front of the house, throwing the scissors, and then running away. Angkhana, 66, is a former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand and a newly appointed member of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/0D5DED3E-F79F-4AB4-8261-F6A19486F062

“Violent acts intended to intimidate a well-known figure like Angkhana not only pose a threat to her and her family, but send a spine-chilling message to the entire Thai human rights community,” said Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Thai government should respond immediately by undertaking a serious investigation to ensure that everyone responsible for this incident is held accountable.”

Angkhana told Human Rights Watch that she and her family felt vulnerable after the Justice Ministry canceled her protection under the government’s witness protection program on April 1. The authorities claimed the service was no longer needed because Angkhana’s life would no longer be in danger after the Department of Special Investigation ended its investigation of the enforced disappearance of her husband, the prominent human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit. [See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/03/17/where-is-somchai-a-brave-wifes-17-year-quest-for-the-truth/]

“The Thai government should not ignore this disturbing incident, which appears to be a response to Angkhana’s effective human rights advocacy,” Pearson said. “Foreign governments and the United Nations should press the Thai government to urgently act to protect Angkhana and other human rights defenders in the country.”

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/13/thailand-prominent-rights-defender-harassed

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US State Department’s report 2021 is out

April 14, 2022

On 12 April, 2022, the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices was made public. The Human Rights Reports 2021 cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements. The U.S. Department of State submits reports on all countries receiving assistance and all United Nations member states to the U.S. Congress in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Trade Act of 1974. For nearly five decades, the United States has issued the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, – in 2021, covering 198 countries and territories.  The preface states that: “The Biden Administration has put human rights at the center of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.  We have also recognized our nation has not always succeeded in protecting the dignity and rights of all Americans, despite the proclamations of freedom, equality, and justice in our founding documents.  It is through the continued U.S. commitment to advance human rights, both domestically and internationally, that we best honor the generations of Americans who are Black, Brown, or other people of color, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, LGBTQI+ persons, immigrants, women and girls, and other historically marginalized groups whose advocacy for their rights and for others has pushed America toward a “more perfect union.

President Biden has called the defense of democracy and human rights the defining challenge of our time.  By convening the first Summit for Democracy in December 2021 – bringing together representatives from 100 governments as well as civil society and the private sector – he sparked global attention and vigor toward democratic renewal and respect for human rights.  Participating governments made significant commitments to revitalize democracy at home and abroad at the first Summit on which we expect meaningful progress during the current Year of Action and before the time of a second Summit.

The reports paint a clear picture of where human rights and democracy are under threat.  They highlight where governments have unjustly jailed, tortured, or even killed political opponents, activists, human rights defenders, or journalists, including in Russia, the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, and Syria.  They document abuses of peaceful protestors demanding democracy and fundamental freedoms in countries such as Burma, Belarus, Cuba, Hong Kong, and Sudan.  They highlight worrying cases of transnational repression – where governments reach across borders to harass, intimidate, or murder dissidents and their loved ones – as exemplified in the dangerous forced diversion by Belarus of an international commercial flight for the sole purpose of arresting a critical independent journalist.

But they also contain signs of progress and glimmers of hope, as the indomitable will to live freely can never be extinguished.  In Iraq, people cast their votes to shape the future of their country in more credible and transparent parliamentary elections than in 2018.  In Botswana, a court advanced the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons by upholding the decriminalization of same-sex relations.  In Turkmenistan, all imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses conscientious objectors to military service were pardoned, a win for freedom of religion or belief.  The stability, security, and health of any country depends on the ability of its people to freely exercise their human rights – to feel safe and included in their communities while expressing their views or gender, loving who they love, organizing with their coworkers, peacefully assembling, living by their conscience, and using their voices and reporting from independent media to hold governments accountable.  There is much progress to be made, here in the United States and globally.  But I know that by working together in the Year of Action and using resources like the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, we can come closer to building a world where respect for human rights is truly universal.

In a reaction on the report human rights activists focused on China said theat they want the State Department to reboot the report’s format to address documentation blind spots and connect it to policy and initiatives to stop the violations and provide accountability for victims.

“It’s a descriptive, objective document but largely of human rights developments that had been already extensively reported by the media, by NGOs, and by human rights bodies within the UN and in many cases at greater detail and length. … It is essentially a recap,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of the New York City-based nonprofit Human Rights in China. “Since it appears to take quite a bit of resources to produce each year, I’d say that going forward, they reference and aggregate some of the developments within three very important, bigger trends like digital authoritarianism, [foreign] influence operations, and [China’s] growing extraterritorial reach.” [from https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/13/china-activists-state-dept-human-rights-00024876]

https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/embed/#?secret=ICAePzAuB5#?secret=IVCGC9q7rK

2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

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Human Rights Defender Vladimir Kara-Murza arrested in Russia

April 14, 2022

Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian democracy activist, historian, twice-poisoned critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime, and a senior advisor to Human Rights First, was reportedly arrested near his Moscow residence on 11 April 2022.  Kara-Murza’s arrest came just days after his return to Russia and shortly after CNN broadcasted an interview with him. He is the winner of 3 human rights awards, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/34e43b60-3236-11ea-b4d5-37ffeeddd006

“We are deeply concerned for our friend Vladimir Kara-Murza’s personal safety, and we call on Russian authorities to release him immediately,” said Michael Breen, President and CEO of Human Rights First.  “Putin and his regime have shown themselves to be willing to break any law, domestic or international, to suppress political opposition at home and subjugate neighboring countries like Ukraine.  We call on all of democracy’s allies to oppose criminal behavior like this to protect human rights in Russia, Ukraine, and around the world.”

Having been targeted for assassination twice before, Kara-Murza knew his return to Russia put him in danger.  In his recent CNN interview, Kara-Murza said, “The biggest gift we could give…to the Kremlin would be just to give up and run…that’s all they want from us.”

https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/press-release/russian-human-rights-activist-vladimir-kara-murza-arrested-moscow

https://hrf.org/speakers/vladimir-kara-murza/

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Major NGO offices in Russia now closed

April 9, 2022

On 8 April 2022, the Russian government closed the offices of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and several other NGOs such as Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, Friedrich Ebert Foundation. This decision has been taken “in connection with the discovered violations of the Russian legislation.”

On 11 March, Russia’s media regulator had already blocked access to Amnesty International’s Russian-language website.

Human Rights Watch had maintained an office in Russia for 30 years. The action was announced just days after an appeals court upheld the liquidation of Russia’s human rights giant, Memorial. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/11/12/it-had-to-happen-russian-authorities-move-to-shut-down-memorial/]

“Human Rights Watch has been working on and in Russia since the Soviet era, and we will continue to do so,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “This new iron curtain will not stop our ongoing efforts to defend the rights of all Russians and to protect civilians in Ukraine.”

Reacting to the news, Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said: “Amnesty’s closing down in Russia is only the latest in a long list of organizations that have been punished for defending human rights and speaking the truth to the Russian authorities. In a country where scores of activists and dissidents have been imprisoned, killed or exiled, where independent media has been smeared, blocked or forced to self-censor, and where civil society organizations have been outlawed or liquidated, you must be doing something right if the Kremlin tries to shut you up.“

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/08/russia-government-shuts-down-human-rights-watch-office

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/08/moscow-shutting-down-amnesty-human-rights-watch-in-russia-a77290

Russia: Authorities close down Amnesty International’s Moscow Office

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Clean energy will not automatically be good for indigenous land defenders

April 7, 2022

Emily Pontecorvo a reporter for GRIST published on 6 April 2022 a piece about a new report by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre which states that the renewable energy sector is unprepared for the protection of land rights defenders.

In April of last year, José de Jesús Robledo Cruz and his wife Maria de Jesús Gomez Vega were found dead in the desert in Sonora, Mexico. In July, Fernando Vela, a doctor in Coqueta, Columbia, was shot to death by two men on a motorcycle while he was in his truck. In September, Juan Macababbad, an attorney in the Philippines was shot dead outside his home.

In each case, the victims were prominent human rights defenders, known in particular for defending their communities’ natural resources from mining, deforestation, water contamination, and other threats. These were just three of at least 76 such murders that occured in 2021. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/03/02/human-rights-high-commissioner-bachelet-urges-support-for-environmental-defenders/]

Business and Human Rights Resource Centre tracks attacks on people who protest or otherwise raise concerns about business-related human rights abuses. It has documented more than 3,800 attacks, including killings, death threats, beatings, arbitrary arrests and detention, and lawsuits, since January 2015, with 615 occurring in 2021 alone.  [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/09/13/global-witness-2020-the-worst-year-on-record-for-environmental-human-rights-defenders/ as well as: https://news.mongabay.com/2022/04/more-than-half-of-activists-killed-in-2021-were-land-environment-defenders/]

“Our data shows almost the tip of the iceberg,” Christen Dobson, senior program manager for the BHRRC and an author of the new report. “Many attacks are not publicly reported. And so we know the problem is much more severe than these figures indicate.”

According to the report, human rights defenders who spoke out against mining projects consistently experienced the greatest number of attacks over the past seven years. The authors say this is especially concerning considering the expansion of mineral production required by a transition to clean energy. All those batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines are going to require a lot of cobalt, nickel, zinc, lithium, and other minerals.

“We’re already seeing this level of attack, and we’re not seeing major producers of transition minerals have strong policies or practices in place about protecting defenders,” said Dobson. “There’s a real risk there and I think it’s an area that we’re very concerned about.”

…

The report urges investors to publish a human rights policy and require that companies begin disclosing human rights and environmental-related risks. But Dobson said that voluntary actions from companies and investors was not enough. She said there was some momentum building behind mandating that companies report on measures they are taking to respect human rights, including legislation proposed in the European Union and Canada.

“It is concerning to see a vast majority of companies and investors, including major renewable energy companies, do not have policies expressing zero-tolerance against reprisals in their operations, supply chains and business relationships,” said Dobson in a statement. “It’s time for companies and investors to recognise the energy transition cannot be effective if it is not also rights-respecting.”

https://grist.org/international/land-defenders-face-violence-and-repression-clean-energy-could-make-it-worse

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Follow up with Laureates of Right Livelihood award

April 7, 2022

What inspires change and drives activism? Can anyone become a change-maker? These were questions we asked back in December, when 2021 Laureates Marthe Wandou, Vladimir Slivyak, Freda Huson and Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment came to Stockholm to be presented with the Right Livelihood Award. [See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/10/04/2021-laureates-of-the-right-livelihood-award/]

All four Laureates have succeeded in mobilising grassroots action and community-based models for change, so in an effort to learn more, we invited US journalist Dara Lind to sit down with them individually and take a deep dive into their stories. We are now happy to present “How to Mobilise Change”, a series of in-depth conversations in which we not only get to know the Laureates better and learn about what prompted them to take action but can also learn about how sustainable change can be achieved – based on their strategies and methods of action. Throughout the spring, we are releasing the recordings one by one. The series starts this week with the release of Cameroonian Laureate Marthe Wandou’s interview and a week of action to support children’s rights.

  https://mailchi.mp/rightlivelihood/what-a-night-8997037?e=24f028b242

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The Unfreedom Monitor: Global Voices adds to the monitoring toolbox

April 5, 2022

On 5 April 2022 Nanjala Nyabola, Advox Director at Global Voices introduced The Unfreedom Monitor, a methodology for tracking digital authoritarianism worldwide

The Unfreedom Monitor is an Advox research initiative that examines the growing phenomenon of networked authoritarianism or digital authoritarianism. “Digital authoritarianism” describes the use of technology to advance repressive political interests. It is not purely confined to authoritarian regimes. Democratic states also use and sell advanced technology to track and/or surveil citizens, spread mis-/disinformation, and disempower citizens’ civic and political participation. Nor is it only states that perpetrate digital authoritarianism—corporations located in democratic countries are key suppliers of the technology that is used. 

The Unfreedom Monitor

Authoritarian regimes have long had a complicated relationship with media and communications technologies. The Unfreedom Monitor is a Global Voices Advox research initiative examining the growing phenomenon of networked authoritarianism or digital authoritarianism.

Download a PDF of the briefing document.

..One major aim of this project is to provide richer context that transcends unique national or thematic situations. It would be an omission to focus solely on the internet and ignore, for example, the effects of the mechanisms of growing repression on press freedom and human rights. In the countries we studied, we found a strong correlation between declining press freedom and growing digital authoritarianism. Information, after all, is the raw material of governance, and both online spaces and traditional media serve the important function of making information available to people and communities to enable them to make independent evaluations of their governments. The impetus to control information on the internet is directly connected to the impetus to control information shared by the press. 

The briefing document provides an overview of key developments in digital authoritarianism in 11 countries and explains the theoretical framework and methodology behind The Unfreedom Monitor project. The document also provides a basis for expanding this research to other countries to deepen our understanding of digital authoritarianism globally, as well as its crucial implications for the future. The preliminary sample of 11 countries was chosen to reflect a range of factors: system of government, approach to human rights (including rankings in indexes), and corporate relations. The countries are: Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Morocco, Myanmar, Russia, Sudan, Tanzania, Turkey, and Zimbabwe.  

Desk research supplemented qualitative study of a dataset comprising media items exploring issues, events, actors, narrative frames, and responses, to identify trends and patterns of digital authoritarianism. We also conducted weekly seminars with the research team to gain a sense of any cross-cutting themes and commonalities that emerged. One interesting outcome was finding that while clients and their interests may be varied, only a handful of companies—many based in nominally democratic countries—were selling the technology that makes some digital authoritarian practices possible.

Another four researchers also worked with four cross-cutting themes concerning digital authoritarianism to develop an approach that can be used across contexts. These themes were: data governance, speech, access, and information. The tendency with internet research is to think about ideas or development in thematic isolation, and we encouraged this cohort of researchers to think both broadly and deeply about what unites all these separate ideas. 

The report finds that digital authoritarianism is not confined to authoritarian states. Rather, it is a culture—of increasing executive power, legislation, and global capital flows—that allows the state to interfere in citizens’ lives and to stifle or frustrate civic engagement. There is no single predictive factor, but digital authoritarianism is closely related to the contraction of press freedom, and resistance to political transitions. Moreover, it is a transnational process, and the availability of technology in one part of the world will eventually have political consequences in another.

This adds to existing efforts such as: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/10/12/report-freedom-on-the-net-2021/

https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/04/24/world-press-freedom-index-2021-is-out/

https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/12/26/to-counter-domestic-extremism-human-rights-first-launches-pyrra/

https://globalvoices.org/2022/04/05/introducing-the-unfreedom-monitor-a-new-project-of-global-voices-advox/

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No end to NSO’s Pegasus trouble

April 5, 2022

TechCrunch of 5 April 2022 reports that Investigators say they have found evidence that a Jordanian journalist and human rights defender’s iPhone was hacked with the Pegasus spyware just weeks after Apple sued the spyware’s maker NSO Group to stop it from targeting Apple’s customers.

Award-winning journalist Suhair Jaradat’s phone was hacked with the notorious spyware as recently as December 5, 2021, according to an analysis of her phone by Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab that was shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication. Jaradat was sent a WhatsApp message from someone impersonating a popular anti-government critic with links to the Pegasus spyware, compromising her phone. According to the forensic analysis, Jaradat’s iPhone was hacked several times in the preceding months and as far back as February 2021.

Apple had filed a lawsuit against Israeli spyware maker NSO Group in November 2021, seeking a court-issued injunction aimed at banning NSO from using Apple’s products and services to develop and deploy hacks against its customers. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/07/21/nsos-pegasus-spyware-now-really-in-the-firing-line/…But so far the case has gotten off to a slow start after the first judge assigned to the case recused herself, with no decision on the case likely to be made any time before June.

Jaradat is one of several Jordanians, including human rights defenders, lawyers and fellow journalists whose phones were compromised likely by agencies of the Jordanian government, according to Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab’s findings out Tuesday.

Among the others targeted include Malik Abu Orabi, a human rights lawyer whose work has included defending the teachers’ union, which in 2019 led the longest public sector strike in the country’s history. Abu Orabi’s phone was targeted as early as August 2019 until June 2021. Also, the phone of Ahmed Al-Neimat, a human rights defender and anti-corruption activist, was targeted by the ForcedEntry exploit in February 2021. The researchers said the hacking of Al-Neimat’s phone is believed to be the earliest suspected use of ForcedEntry.

Another Jordanian journalist and human rights defender’s phone was targeted, according to the researchers, but who asked for her identity not to be disclosed.

—

Meanwhile, on 5 April 2022, AFP reported that Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri, who is in Israeli detention, filed a complaint in France Tuesday against surveillance firm NSO Group for having “illegally infiltrated” his mobile phone with the spyware Pegasus.

Hamouri, who also holds French citizenship, is serving a four-month term of administrative detention ordered by an Israeli military court in March on the claim he is a “threat to security”.

He is one of several Palestinian activists whose phones were hacked using the Pegasus malware made by the Israeli company NSO, according to a report in November by human rights groups. See: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/11/10/palestinian-ngos-dubbed-terrorist-were-hacked-with-pegasus-spyware/

On Tuesday, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Human Rights League (LDH) and Hamouri filed a complaint with the Paris prosecutor.  It accused NSO of “having illegally infiltrated the telephone of rights defender Salah Hamouri,” they said in a statement sent to the AFP bureau in Jerusalem. 

“Obviously, this is an operation that is part of a largely political framework given the harassment Hamouri has been subjected to for years and the attacks on human rights defenders in Israel,” attorney Patrick Baudouin, honorary president of the FIDH, told AFP.

https://www.securityweek.com/palestinian-lawyer-sues-pegasus-spyware-maker-france

https://citizenlab.ca/2022/04/peace-through-pegasus-jordanian-human-rights-defenders-and-journalists-hacked-with-pegasus-spyware/

then

https://cybersecuritynews.com/whatsapp-wins-nso-pegasus-spyware-hacking-case/

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