The finding by a senior judge that NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware was used by the ruler of Dubai to hack the phone of his ex-wife and five of her associates, all resident in England, raises fresh questions about Cherie Blair’s involvement with the company.
NSO has previously said that its malware, which infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones, is only intended for use by its government clients against criminals and terrorists.
However, in a judgment published on Wednesday, Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division of the high court, found that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum had expressly or implicitly directed his agents to target the phone of Princess Haya, two of her solicitors including a member of the House of Lords, the princess’s personal assistant and two members of her security staff.
This happened at a significant time in legal proceedings between the couple – a far cry from criminals and terrorists.
Blair is an adviser to NSO on human rights, and the judgment is likely to subject her role to further scrutiny, particularly given past concerns raised about the QC’s personal and business interests and those of her husband, Tony Blair.
She was one of two people who alerted Fiona Shackleton, one of Haya’s solicitors, to the hacking by the sheikh, according to legal papers released on Wednesday, whose findings were made on the balance of probabilities – the standard of proof required in civil courts.
Blair called Shackleton on 5 August last year, the same day she says she was informed by a senior unnamed member at NSO Group that Shackleton and her client had been hacked using its software.
NSO does not reveal the identity of its customers, but in a letter to the court it said that after an investigation it had terminated a customer’s use of the Pegasus software.
Journalists, human rights activists and lawyers are among tens of thousands of people believed to be identified as people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016, as revealed by an investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations in the Pegasus project investigation. Some may wonder why the company does not appear to have acted so decisively against many other of its clients accused of abusing its technology.
In a statement in response to the stories published in July, NSO denied “false claims”, adding: “The fact that a number appears on that list is in no way indicative of whether that number was selected for surveillance using Pegasus. NSO is not related to the list [of numbers], it is not an NSO list, and it never was. It is not a list of targets or potential targets of NSO’s customers.
“NSO Group will continue to investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action based on the results of these investigations. This includes shutting down of a customer’s system, something NSO has proven its ability and willingness to do, due to confirmed misuse, has done multiple times in the past, and will not hesitate to do again if a situation warrants.”
Past controversies involving Blair include when she lobbied Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, on behalf of the crown prince of Qatar, which the QC characterised as harmless. She also faced criticism for representing the government of the Maldives in its case against the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, who was jailed for 13 years for terrorism after a trial ruled to be unfair by a UN working group.
She declined to comment on her role with NSO.