Israeli Spy Tech Used Against Daughter of Man Who Inspired “Hotel Rwanda”
Pegasus software made by Israeli firm NSO Group was used to spy on the daughter of imprisoned dissident Paul Rusesabagina, whose actions during the 1994 genocide were dramatized in a 2004 film starring Don Cheadle.
Key Findings
A cell phone belonging to the daughter of Paul Rusesabagina, an outspoken critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his authoritarian government, was compromised multiple times using NSO’s Pegasus spyware in the aftermath of Rusesabagina’s kidnapping by Rwanda in August last year.
Rwandan opposition figures abroad may also have been targeted with Pegasus. One of them was arrested in Mozambique in May and his whereabouts are unknown.
Evidence suggests Rwanda also sought to spy on high-ranking political figures and diplomats in neighboring countries, as well as lawyers and journalists.
In August 2020, Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan dissident and the inspiration for the award-winning movie Hotel Rwanda, left his home in Texas to fly to Burundi for a speaking tour. When he landed in Dubai to change planes, he sent a WhatsApp message to his family to say happy birthday to his grandson.
Carine Kanimba looks out of a window
Credit: Hatim Kaghat
Carine Kanimba in Belgium in February 2021.
Then he disappeared.
Four days later, Rusesabagina emerged on television in Rwanda, handcuffed and escorted by officers. In a bold and complex operation, Rwandan authorities had tricked Rusesabagina onto a private plane in Dubai. It flew him not to Burundi, as he believed, but to Rwanda, where he faced charges of financing terrorist activities.
His adopted daughter, Carine Kanimba, a U.S. and Belgian citizen, soon launched a campaign to free her father. She never set foot in Rwanda — but it is likely the government in Kigali had her under close watch, thanks to cutting-edge and highly invasive Israeli spyware that was placed on her phone.
For almost six months, until as recently as July 3, Kanimba’s cell phone was bombarded with Pegasus, malicious software manufactured by Israeli tech firm NSO Group, according to research by OCCRP and The Pegasus Project, a global consortium of journalists coordinated by Forbidden Stories. Forensic analysis by Amnesty International’s Security Lab, which lent technical assistance to the project, found that Kanimba’s phone was successfully infected with Pegasus multiple times.
When Pegasus is implanted on a device, it effectively gives an attacker complete access to the target’s phone. It can read messages and passwords, access social media, use GPS to locate the target, listen to the target’s conversations, and even record them. End-to-end encryption, available through popular apps like Signal, does not protect against Pegasus once the phone is compromised.
Read NSO Group’s response to The Pegasus Project here.
In a series of responses, NSO Group said Pegasus is sold only to governments to go after criminals and terrorists, and has saved many lives. It denied that its spyware was systematically misused and challenged the validity of data obtained by reporters.
As part of the investigation, reporters obtained a list of over 50,000 numbers throughout the world believed to have been selected by NSO Group clients for targeting with Pegasus. Reporters were able to identify dozens of numbers belonging to Rwandans or other people of likely interest to Rwanda’s government from neighboring countries. They included activists, journalists, dissidents, and government officials.
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https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pegasus-project/israeli-spy-tech-used-against-daughter-of-man-who-inspired-hotel-rwanda