Israel’s spreading NSO scandal derails Netanyahu’s corruption trial

Netanyahu’s lawyers had asked the court to postpone the testimony of prosecution witness Shlomo Filber after police acknowledged last week they used spyware to access the contents of his cellphone. Filber, a longtime Netanyahu confidant, is suspected of involvement in a deal under which one of Israel’s largest telecommunications companies would reap regulatory benefits in return for helping to arrange favorable media coverage of the Netanyahu family.

That alleged deal figures prominently in Netanyahu’s lengthy trial on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes.

According to a report Monday in the Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist detailing widespread police use of the surveillance technology, law enforcement authorities also used the Pegasus spyware without a court warrant against Netanyahu’s son Avner as well as a co-defendant in Netanyahu’s trial named Iris Elovitch and the former prime minister’s media advisers. The newspaper also said that additional targets included the chief of Israel’s workers union, disability rights protesters, journalists at the Walla news website, the business mogul Rami Levy, several mayors and senior officials in the finance ministry.

Speaking in parliament on Monday, Netanyahu said, “It is a black day for the state of Israel. Something unthinkable happened here. Police officials have illegally spied, with the most aggressive tools in the world, after countless civilians.”

Israeli concerns over possible abuses of the Pegasus spyware first erupted last month after earlier Calcalist articles detailed how police since 2013 have been using NSO’s technology without warrants to target Israeli political activists, mayors and other citizens. The revelation spurred probes by the police and the attorney general’s office.

The initial Calcalist reports last month had said police used Pegasus spyware to target organizers of protests against Netanyahu while he was still prime minister. But Israel’s right-wing media reported that the same hacking tool was also used against Netanyahu’s inner circle. Netanyahu’s political base, which has long claimed that the corruption trial is part of a left-wing conspiracy to topple him from power, has responded with outrage.

“Earthquake — Tonight it was revealed that police investigators hacked into phones illegally to overthrow a powerful right-wing prime minister,” said Yariv Levin, who heads Netanyahu’s Likud faction in parliament. “It’s the Israeli Watergate.”

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who replaced Netanyahu last June, also expressed concern. “The reports about Pegasus, if they are true, are very serious,” Bennett said. He said that newly appointed Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara, would investigate the matter, with “the advantage of coming from outside the system.”

Israel’s police commissioner Kobi Shabtai on Tuesday cut short an official trip to the United Arab Emirates because of the growing scandal. The Israeli police said in a statement that Shabtai supports the ongoing investigation into police use of NSO spyware, adding that it “has nothing to hide from the public.”

The police had originally asserted that all of their surveillance activities had been “done in accordance with the law, on the basis of court orders and strict work procedures.” But earlier this month, the police said that additional findings from its internal probe “change in some ways” its earlier statement.

The Washington Post and 16 other media partners reported last summer that NSO’s military grade spyware was used to hack the phones of journalists, activists and other high profile figures across the world, though Israel’s own use of the surveillance technology remained largely secret.

NSO has been required to receive approval by Israel’s defense ministry for exporting its cyber technology. NSO was blacklisted by the U.S. government in November, and since then, the ministry has barred cyber companies from exporting to all but 37 countries, down from 102, Calcalist reported.

Israeli media have long reported that Netanyahu used the overseas sale of the product to advance Israeli interests abroad, especially in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Gulf where his administration sought to forge diplomatic ties.

“What an irony: The man who leveraged Pegasus for foreign policy gains now believes he lost his domestic power on account of the spyware,” wrote Aluf Benn, editor of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.

Read more:

Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists worldwide

Somebody has to do the dirty work’: NSO founders defend the spyware they built