What was described as a powerful spyware was surreptitiously attached to the phone of Khashoggi’s wife, Hanan Elatr, several months before he was killed and his body dismembered by Saudi agents in October of 2018, the report said.
The UAE action was uncovered by a group of news organizations investigating Khashoggi’s murder, the report said. Khashoggi had been a writer for the Washington Post and a leading critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman before his death.
The spyware used to bug Elatr’s phone was called Pegasus owned and sold around the world by the Israeli NSO Group, the report added.
A forensic analysis of the phone showed that the compromising spyware had been put on it manually in April 2018 while Elatr was being questioned by UAE officials, according to the report.