Pegasus: Israeli spyware 'used to capture Dubai's Princess Latifa'
Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum, the runaway princess whose detention by her father, the ruler of Dubai, caused a worldwide scandal, was captured in 2018 using Pegasus spyware, an investigation has found.
According to the Washington Post, phone numbers belonging to friends and associates of the daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is the prime minister of the UAE, were added to the list of numbers to be targeted for surveillance by the software provided by Israel's NSO Group.
The numbers were added in February 2018 in the hours and days after the princess escaped Dubai with the help of her friend Tiina Jauhiainen, a Finnish capoeira instructor.
Eight days later, when she travelled as far as India's Malabar coast, Indian, then Emirati forces violently boarded her boat and returned her to Dubai.
It is not possible to verify what role Pegasus may have played in her recapture, without having the devices to analyse.
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The NSO Group has denied that the list of 50,000 numbers, which has been reported on by a consortium of international journalists, is one of the targets or potential targets of the company's customers, and told the Washington Post that its "repeated reliance on this list and association of the people on this list as potential surveillance targets is false and misleading”.
Last year, a British judge ruled that Sheikh Mohammed was keeping both Latifa and her sister Shamsa captive and had kidnapped the two on separate occasions.
In February, the BBC broadcast videos secretly recorded by Latifa and sent to friends abroad, in which she described her capture and her imprisonment after her return to the emirate.
She said she was being held alone without access to medical or legal help in a locked villa guarded by police.
Last month, she was seen in Spain in Instagram photos, with a campaign group supporting her saying there had been "very positive steps forward" in terms of her personal freedom.
The Washington Post reported that UAE authorities appeared to have also entered numbers into the Pegasus list linked to Princess Haya bint Hussein, Sheikh Mohammed's then-wife. Princess Haya, the half-sister of Jordan's King Abdullah II, told a British court during a custody battle with Sheikh Mohammed that she had expressed concern for Latifa's wellbeing after she was returned to Dubai.
Numbers belonging to Princess Haya, her half-sister, assistants, a horse trainer, and members of her legal and security teams were all entered in early 2019 - shortly before and after she fled to London with their two children.
This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.
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