Dozens of journalists co-ordinated by Forbidden Stories with technical support from Amnesty International have been investigating a leak of 50,000 phone numbers believed to have been targeted with the Pegasus software developed by the NSO Group.

The Pegasus software is surreptitiously installed on victims’ phones and allows the attacker complete access to the device’s messages, emails, media, microphone, camera, calls and contacts.

Over the coming week, media partners of The Pegasus Project – including The Guardian, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung and The Washington Post – will run a series of stories exposing details of how world leaders, politicians, human rights activists, and journalists have been selected as potential targets of the spyware.

From the leaked data and their investigations, Forbidden Stories and its media partners have identified potential NSO clients in 11 countries: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Togo, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor Poisot, a judge and former president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, is one of the most prominent lawyers to have been allegedly targeted in Mexico, The Guardian reported today.

London-based barrister Rodney Dixon QC, whose high-profile clients include Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of murdered Saudi dissident Jamal Khasoggi, was allegedly targeted, as was Ms Cengiz herself.

French human rights lawyer Joseph Breham was allegedly targeted multiple times in 2019, potentially by Morocco, as were two lawyers bringing a lawsuit against NSO on behalf of Saudi exile Omar Abdulaziz.

Not all phones targeted with the software were successfully compromised. According to Amnesty, it is impossible to know what attempts were successful without forensic analysis of the phones in question.

Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said: “The Pegasus Project lays bare how NSO’s spyware is a weapon of choice for repressive governments seeking to silence journalists, attack activists and crush dissent, placing countless lives in peril.

“These revelations blow apart any claims by NSO that such attacks are rare and down to rogue use of their technology. While the company claims its spyware is only used for legitimate criminal and terror investigations, it’s clear its technology facilitates systemic abuse. They paint a picture of legitimacy, while profiting from widespread human rights violations.

“Clearly, their actions pose larger questions about the wholesale lack of regulation that has created a wild west of rampant abusive targeting of activists and journalists. Until this company and the industry as a whole can show it is capable of respecting human rights, there must be an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer and use of surveillance technology.”

In a statement, the NSO Group said the investigation is “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories that raise serious doubts about the reliability and interests of the sources”.

It added: “After checking their claims, we firmly deny the false allegations made in their report. Their sources have supplied them with information which has no factual basis, as evident by the lack of supporting documentation for many of their claims.”