On the left, Jamal Khashoggi’s widow Hanan Elatr is photographed in the White House during her reported meeting with senior Biden officials. Elatr is seen with her late husband in the photograph on the right. (Photo courtesy of Elatr)
Jamal Khashoggi’s widow sued an Israeli spyware company in a U.S. federal court on Thursday, claiming that their “infamous” Pegasus “cyberweapon” transformed her devices into “handheld spies” against her late husband.
For years, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi fought for recognition of her marital status by suing for a signed copy of her Islamic certificate of marriage.
Global attention initially focused on Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz, but Elatr would struggle to reshape the public’s understanding of her late husband’s life and legacy through press interviews and highly publicized fights against the Turkish government and the NSO Group, the Israeli spyware company she’s long threatened to sue.
Elatr followed through on those threats in a 40-page federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction known for cases involving the intelligence community.
“Hanan Khashoggi suffered through the brutal kidnapping and murder of her husband, Jamal Khashoggi, at the hands of Saudi Arabian actors sent by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, assisted by allies in the United Arab Emirates,” her lawsuit states. “While she was still mourning her husband’s death, in addition to dealing with the violent nature of the killing and international publicity surrounding it, she was hit with another disturbing revelation. For nearly a year leading up to Jamal’s murder, Hanan’s phones had been infiltrated by NSO Group spyware.”
The Washington Post noted that the lawsuit relies heavily on 2021 reporting that it ran in concert with a coalition of news organizations, along with forensic analysis from Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and Amnesty International’s Security Lab.
In an interview late last year for Law&Crime’s podcast “Objections,” Elatr said the The Post’s findings “shocked” her.
The NSO Group has long denied any connection with Khashoggi’s death.
“NSO has repeatedly stated that our technology was not associated in any way with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi or any of his family members, including Hanan Elatr,” the organization told Law&Crime in October.
The lawsuit alleges otherwise, saying that Elatr’s phone was first targeted in November 2017, less than a year before Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment.
At the time, Elatr says, “she was growing closer with Jamal” and barraged by Enhanced Social Engineering Messages (ESEMs), referring to the use of manipulation to get a target to reveal vulnerabilities.
“These were ESEM text messages that were personalized to induce her to follow the malicious link containing Pegasus,” the lawsuit states.
She says more malicious messages were sent to her phone in April 2018.
“In April 2018, while working as a flight attendant, Hanan arrived at the Dubai International Airport and found seven Emirati intelligence officers waiting for her,” the lawsuit states. “Hanan was blindfolded, handcuffed, and transported to a remote interrogation cell where she was questioned about Jamal and his activities for over 17 hours. Hanan was detained and her captors took both of her cell phones that she had been using to communicate with Jamal. Citizen Lab later confirmed in its analysis that it was likely during this time that Pegasus was manually installed onto at least one of her phones. NSO Group touts the ability for Pegasus to be installed through multiple mechanisms, and physical installation is advertised explicitly by NSO Group.”
In May 2018, the following month, Elatr says she was placed under house arrest in the United Arab Emirates. She alleges that Saudi Arabia leveraged its relationship with the UAE to install spyware on her phone at this time.
Elatr says that she and Khashoggi married on June 2, 2018.
Khashoggi would be killed inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018.
Just days earlier on Sept. 30, 2018, Khashoggi left Elatr a birthday message on WhatsApp, which is embedded in her lawsuit.
This message between Jamal Khashoggi and Hanan Elatr is embedded in the latter’s lawsuit against Israeli spyware company, NSO Group.
Elatr’s representatives didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Read the lawsuit in full here.
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