Speaker 1: Hey, they're more than the movie listeners. I'm Nando Vila.
Speaker 1: We're taking over the feed to share a pretty wild
Speaker 1: story with you. It's called Shoot the Messenger, Espionage, murder
Speaker 1: and Pegasus Spyware. I've been working on this project for
Speaker 1: over two years. Shoot the Messenger is a new bi
Speaker 1: weekly serialized podcast from Exile Content. Season one is all
Speaker 1: about Pegasus spyware. Pegasus is the world's most sophisticated spyware
Speaker 1: to date. It can give full access to your phone.
Speaker 1: That means everything, your texts, emails, phone calls, camera, microphone everything.
Speaker 1: How did this spyware come to be? We'll investigate how
Speaker 1: it works, who makes it, and the industry booming around it.
Speaker 1: An episode one, which you're about to hear, will start
Speaker 1: with the murder of journalist Jamal Kashogi and uncover how
Speaker 1: Pegasus was found on the phones of many in his
Speaker 1: inner circle. Here is Shoot the Messenger. Dubai is known
Speaker 1: for luxury, high end shopping and a bump in nightlife.
Speaker 1: The heat and the United Arab Emirates can be oppressive,
Speaker 1: but in springtime Dubai can be pleasant. You can expect
Speaker 1: sunshine with clear skies, balmy but not too hot. It
Speaker 1: was a night like this on ap when Hanan, a latter,
Speaker 1: landed in her hometown of Dubai. After twenty two years
Speaker 1: as a flight attendant with Emirates Airlines, the routine had
Speaker 1: long turned to muscle memory. On this Saturday night, Hanan
Speaker 1: had just finished a long flight from Toronto. Her shift
Speaker 1: was over and she was tired and ready to go home.
Speaker 1: Hanan would have been wearing the standard Amarani uniform, a
Speaker 1: fitted cream colored blazer with red piping with signature red
Speaker 1: pill box hat. And this is where I like to
Speaker 1: imagine Hanan and red pumps clacking along in the manner
Speaker 1: which is distinctive to crew and pilots no matter how
Speaker 1: often you fly, pulling a black roll away behind her,
Speaker 1: always black, and maybe she had one of those squarish
Speaker 1: topebags trapped on top of her roll away. Hannan had
Speaker 1: deboarded a plane, exited the gate area, and walked through
Speaker 1: immigration at Dubai's International Airport thousands of times, but this
Speaker 1: time something was different. And this immigration people they know
Speaker 1: me by name. He normally took my passport to speak
Speaker 1: to me about my flight, but in this case, he
Speaker 1: said Hannan within the side. The system is down and
Speaker 1: I feel there is something wrong. Hannan rushed into a
Speaker 1: nearby bathroom and locked herself in a stall. She called
Speaker 1: the person she always called once she landed at home,
Speaker 1: her sister, and I told you, my sister, there's somethingle
Speaker 1: and go on. Hanan had a terrible feeling that the
Speaker 1: Emiadi men hanging around immigration had something to do with
Speaker 1: her fiance. Her fiance was a journalist known for speaking
Speaker 1: out on human rights, and in the UAE, loudly defending
Speaker 1: human rights could get you detained or even jailed. Hanan's
Speaker 1: fiance had already told her he worried about the way
Speaker 1: his work would impact her life. He gave me the
Speaker 1: engagement drink, and when he put the rink in my hand,
Speaker 1: he said, Hannan and his kids, I might be a
Speaker 1: curse in new life. I might create a problem for you.
Speaker 1: Hanan wasn't involved in politics, She hadn't had any run
Speaker 1: ins with the police. But sitting in that bathroom stall
Speaker 1: in the Dubai airport, her fiance's words echoed in her head.
Speaker 1: I remember this wound. I was very scared. She gathered
Speaker 1: herself and left the stall. When Hanan walked out of
Speaker 1: the bathroom, She was quickly flanked by Emirati intelligence officers.
Speaker 1: One of the member woke with us quietly and the
Speaker 1: behavior shift. I realized you just have to comply with Jim.
Speaker 1: Hanan was unhandcuffed, blindfolded, put in a car, and taken
Speaker 1: to an interrogation cell. I cannot experts to you. What
Speaker 1: is my feeling is this time the band in my
Speaker 1: stomach from the bannock. The intelligence officers demanded she hand
Speaker 1: over all of her devices, a laptop and two Android phones,
Speaker 1: and that to share her passwords. She was taken to
Speaker 1: a remote location where she was questioned overnight and into
Speaker 1: the morning. Seventeen hours later, the intelligence officers returned Hanan's
Speaker 1: devices and took her home. Hanan wanted to resume the
Speaker 1: life she had built for herself, leading a cabin crew
Speaker 1: across trans atlantic flights, traveling and visiting family. She looked
Speaker 1: forward to her wedding ceremony in Washington, d C. Just
Speaker 1: a couple of months away. But after she was detained,
Speaker 1: everything changed. It turns out that while Hanan was being questioned,
Speaker 1: the Emirati intelligence officers were executing a much more effective
Speaker 1: plan to get information from her. I never had my
Speaker 1: normal life back. That's because when Amiradi intelligence officers had
Speaker 1: Hanan's phone, they installed a highly sophisticated piece of spywear,
Speaker 1: and as Hanan went about her life, the spy where
Speaker 1: had unknowingly turned her into an informant, providing a direct
Speaker 1: window to the person she cared about. Most fears are
Speaker 1: growing over the fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamaka, who
Speaker 1: vanished after entering this Saudi Arabian consulate in Restrountable details
Speaker 1: are pouring in about the likely death of this Washington
Speaker 1: Post columnist because and they are just simply horrifying. Jamal
Speaker 1: Kashogi Hannan's newly what husband, the Saudi journalist who had
Speaker 1: been living in Washington, d C. In South exile writing
Speaker 1: op eds for the Washington Post, was assassinated just months
Speaker 1: after her detention. We never thought me, uncle Johnal. They
Speaker 1: will be extremists to their level to kill him, and
Speaker 1: this terrible way. When Kashoki disappeared from the Saudi consulate
Speaker 1: in it would be weeks before the world learned what
Speaker 1: occurred in his final hours. But it's taken years for
Speaker 1: us to learn he wasn't just killed. He was systematically
Speaker 1: hunted in a way we have never seen before. And
Speaker 1: what we now know is that the first weapon used
Speaker 1: against Kashogi was digital and it's called Pegasus. Pegasus is
Speaker 1: probably the most advanced piece of spy where it is
Speaker 1: effectively the most invasive form of surveillance imaginable licenses this
Speaker 1: software to intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Worldwidime tool can
Speaker 1: also be deployed by a government to crush descent. Pecasus
Speaker 1: is a kind of software that can be used to
Speaker 1: hijack your phone. It's a military grade spying software. It's
Speaker 1: this magic thing. It can infect your phone, and once
Speaker 1: it does, it's inside of your phone and it's like
Speaker 1: a little worm and it can burrow into every piece
Speaker 1: of equipment in your phone. This is Dana Priest. She
Speaker 1: covers national security for the Washington Post, the same newspaper
Speaker 1: as Jamal Kashogi. It can turn the microphone on, it
Speaker 1: can turn the camera on. It can go into all
Speaker 1: of your photos, all of your emails, even your deleted messages,
Speaker 1: and scoop them up and take them somewhere seven and
Speaker 1: you'll never know it. You'll never know it. Pegasus implicates
Speaker 1: several countries and multiple government agencies and unites unlikely allies.
Speaker 1: It's part of a massive and mostly unregulated, multibillion dollar
Speaker 1: global industry. Battlefields aren't physical anymore. They aren't far away
Speaker 1: across oceans or borders. They're in our pocket. And the
Speaker 1: threats that journalists face as they seek out and reveal
Speaker 1: uncomfortable truths are threats that we are all vulnerable to,
Speaker 1: no matter where we live, who we know, and what
Speaker 1: we do. Jamaica Showgi's assassination reveals that journalists are the
Speaker 1: canaries in the coal mine these days. You don't have
Speaker 1: to be a high profile journalists, or a dissident or
Speaker 1: a famous truth teller to get swept up. If you've
Speaker 1: ever had a phone, if you've ever had a secret,
Speaker 1: you're at risk too. I'm Nando Vila and I'm Rose
Speaker 1: Reed and this is Shoot the Messenger, a new investigative
Speaker 1: reporting podcast from Exile Content Studio. Every season, we investigate
Speaker 1: one international news story you may have heard the headlines.
Speaker 1: This is the deep dive. Nando and I started the
Speaker 1: series with one question, what is the biggest threat to
Speaker 1: journalists today? We put up a bulletin board and stuck
Speaker 1: a pen for every journalist who was threatened or assassinated,
Speaker 1: or if they had a family member who was threatened
Speaker 1: or assassinated directly because of their work in the last
Speaker 1: five years. And we found one link that kept coming
Speaker 1: up again and again, from Mexico to d C to
Speaker 1: the United Arab Emirates Pegasus. How did this spyware come
Speaker 1: to be? How does it work? And how vulnerable are you?
Speaker 1: Over the course of ten episodes, we're doing a special
Speaker 1: partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists on espionage, murder
Speaker 1: and Pegasus spyware put in the hell could have happened
Speaker 1: in there? Which he's together what happened? Almost like who
Speaker 1: done it? Given one instance of an attack, can we
Speaker 1: trace that to other instances in other countries as well?
Speaker 1: Regarding the spying and the bagattis, we did not know.
Speaker 1: They did drag him through me because they know the
Speaker 1: closest to hunt to him. They started with me. Episode
Speaker 1: one Jamaica Shogi a story told in three parts his life,
Speaker 1: death and betrayal. Jamal was a great man as a
Speaker 1: journalist and as a husband. Hanana latter first met Jamalka
Speaker 1: Shogi at a conference in two thousand and nine. Jamal
Speaker 1: is a kind of person we can say is not
Speaker 1: in the right or left. He's in the middle in
Speaker 1: his opinion and his vision because he's very open minded.
Speaker 1: Any bad ground can sit down with Jamal any race
Speaker 1: any i do Luji and do you have a different
Speaker 1: view from him? But you will walk away with a smile.
Speaker 1: Nana Kashoki captain touch and they are friends for almost
Speaker 1: a decade before their romance began. I met Jamal first
Speaker 1: time with was a nine in Dubai where I grown up,
Speaker 1: and I remember very well. We had a conversation over
Speaker 1: two hours. He was talking about the Middle East politics
Speaker 1: and form policy of US toward the Middle East, and
Speaker 1: we realize we are like a twin and we continue.
Speaker 1: And I always used to give him a feedback in
Speaker 1: any article in the published opinion. I used to give
Speaker 1: him a feedback and he was always waiting for me,
Speaker 1: calling me up, discussing with me. Kasoki spent most of
Speaker 1: his career as a writer and editor for Amadina, one
Speaker 1: of the oldest and biggest newspapers in Saudi Arabia. Kashoki
Speaker 1: had grown up among a social elite and considered himself
Speaker 1: a moderate, but over time he developed a reputation in
Speaker 1: the Middle East for speaking truth to power. Speaking out
Speaker 1: cost him several jobs. He was fired from Almadina for
Speaker 1: publishing pieces that were critical of the Saudi regime, supporting
Speaker 1: women's rights to drive, or blowing the whistle on corruption
Speaker 1: among the religious police. Kaushoki then worked for Saudi ambassadors
Speaker 1: and diplomats, living between Washington, d C. And Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: This way he was able to maintain his elite social
Speaker 1: status in the kingdom and then in the Arab spring
Speaker 1: erupted across the Middle East. It's the first Arab revolution
Speaker 1: or it wills that people were fearless, but that they
Speaker 1: were joyous deposed. Egypt eighteen Day Revolution defies all expectations.
Speaker 1: Protesters across Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Bahrain used social
Speaker 1: media to nice the masses and take to the streets.
Speaker 1: In turn, many leaders in the region began to heavily
Speaker 1: surveil social media in order to curtail public discourse and dissent.
Speaker 1: A new industry developed to keep up with government's demand
Speaker 1: to surveil. The press was a major target. The Committee
Speaker 1: to Protect Journalists has reported that at the end of
Speaker 1: more than three hundred and sixty journalists, which is increase
Speaker 1: over around the world, are currently imprisoned, either charged with
Speaker 1: crimes against the state like treason, or their paper of
Speaker 1: record charged with libel, or even a personal matter exposed
Speaker 1: if illegal in their country, like committing adultery. Journalism such
Speaker 1: a critical component at the outset of the Arab Spring
Speaker 1: has become one of its long term casual. For the
Speaker 1: very first time, a lot of the main television channels
Speaker 1: in Egypt are directly owned by the Egyptian military. This
Speaker 1: is new. You only need to target a handful of
Speaker 1: journalists before the rest of them are in line. Enjoying
Speaker 1: the episode, make sure to subscribe to Shoot the Messenger Espionage,
Speaker 1: Murder and Pegasus spyware. You can find exiles Shoot the
Speaker 1: Messenger anywhere you get your podcasts. Okay, let's get back
Speaker 1: to the episode. Following the Arab Spring in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: authorities across North Africa and the Middle East increased online
Speaker 1: censorship and took over broadcast networks and media companies. Revolution
Speaker 1: did not come to Saudi Arabia, but in Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: got a new leader, now a thirty one, an astonishing
Speaker 1: rights to power appears complete. They call him MBS. He's young,
Speaker 1: popular and promising more change than these country's ever seen.
Speaker 1: The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly referred to as MBS,
Speaker 1: initially spoke of reforms. He allowed women to drive and
Speaker 1: attend sporting events. But while MBS endorsed some social reform,
Speaker 1: he crushed any type of political reform or opposition. Here's
Speaker 1: a clip of Jamal ka Shogi commenting on the new leadership,
Speaker 1: taken from an interview he did with Global News. I
Speaker 1: have fixed treelings about that. I'm very much supportive for
Speaker 1: his reform for reform, but in the same time I
Speaker 1: immediately say he doesn't need to disintimidation. Mohammed bin Samon
Speaker 1: took the new social media playbook to a new level
Speaker 1: in Saudi Arabia. He worked closely with authorities to watch,
Speaker 1: target and silence any opposition, either discrediting opponents and complex
Speaker 1: media campaigns or arresting them and sometimes their family members
Speaker 1: as well. Kahoki's friends advised him to be careful. It
Speaker 1: was sad to me, but it is not that I
Speaker 1: time to shave MBS and his media is our singled
Speaker 1: out independent journalists after Koshogi openly questioned the Saudi regime
Speaker 1: support for the newly elected American President Donald Trump on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Authorities told Koshogi to stay offline in two thousand sixteen
Speaker 1: because he said a negative opinion about electing President Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: The Saudi authority did most like he speaking frankly and
Speaker 1: ask him to sit down at home, not to write anything.
Speaker 1: Most to a bear almost under house arrested in the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand seventeen, Jama Kashogi decided it was
Speaker 1: time to leave his home country of Saudi Arabia. Whatever
Speaker 1: ner space I had was getting nerwer, So I just
Speaker 1: decided to leave before I just do it. Sixty years
Speaker 1: old and they want to enjoy life and they want
Speaker 1: to be three to speak for my country. Kashoki continued
Speaker 1: his reporting, but he never considered himself a dissident. Jammal
Speaker 1: did not leave to criticize, only just for a sick
Speaker 1: of criticize. Jam l was of domestic about future of
Speaker 1: his country. He loved his country, but he loved to
Speaker 1: be identified as in Saogia and Arabs. Kashoki went to
Speaker 1: d C and began writing Our Beds for the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Kashogi put more than six thousand miles between himself and
Speaker 1: the Crown Prince and thought he would start a new chapter,
Speaker 1: one where he could be free to speak his mind.
Speaker 1: Hanan allowed her remembers the day Kaushoki arrived in the
Speaker 1: United States. I was in London in this day operating
Speaker 1: my flights. Immediately I called to him to chicken him.
Speaker 1: I was so happy, and I did tell him something
Speaker 1: and I believe in it. I said, make use of
Speaker 1: your freedom. Speak up, And Kashoki did speak up. He
Speaker 1: used his new platform in the United States to comment
Speaker 1: on his home country and Middle Eastern politics, and his
Speaker 1: first columns for The Washington Post, Kashogi wrote, quote Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia's Crown Prince is acting like Putin, and quote Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia wasn't always this repressive. Now it's unbearable. As Jamaka
Speaker 1: Shogi worked in exile, his fan base grew to over
Speaker 1: a million followers on Twitter. Saudi has an extremely active
Speaker 1: Twitter base. There's data showing that more than seventy of
Speaker 1: Saudis are Twitter users. Even in ocean away from Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia Jamaica, Shogi still knew he had to be cautious.
Speaker 1: He avoided going to Saudi embassies and would tell his
Speaker 1: fellow exiled friends to avoid them too, But he wasn't scared.
Speaker 1: As Hanan would describe, he was trying to be carefully,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't scared for his life. He never come
Speaker 1: back home and the books that change fifty chin in
Speaker 1: the door I used to do before we go to sleep.
Speaker 1: Kashoki got comfortable with his new life in exile, but
Speaker 1: he was homesick. He wanted to build a more permanent
Speaker 1: home and turned to Istanbul, Turkey, a mix between east
Speaker 1: and West, closer to his home country, but what Kashoki
Speaker 1: considered a safe enough distance. We agree. You have to
Speaker 1: buy a fleft in the stumble, to get a passport
Speaker 1: and to get a shelter from the Turkish authority. Moving
Speaker 1: a Turkey this is where things got a little more complicated. Well,
Speaker 1: Jamal's personal life was more complex than we knew before
Speaker 1: he died. He had two relationships. One was a longer
Speaker 1: relationship and he was married and that was Hanan. And
Speaker 1: the second relationship that we knew more about was his
Speaker 1: recent fiance Hatija in Turkey, so the two women did
Speaker 1: not know each other. During a trip to Istanbul, a
Speaker 1: friend entered Koshogi to a Turkish scholar, Hatija Sindas. Around
Speaker 1: the same time Kashoki married Hanan in a religious Muslim
Speaker 1: ceremony in Washington, d C. He began dating Hatija and
Speaker 1: Istanbul and Hanan didn't know about Hadija and Atisha didn't
Speaker 1: know about Hanan, and most people, honestly, even his good friends,
Speaker 1: did not know about Hanan. We're not here to focus
Speaker 1: on Kashogi's romantic endeavors. He's not here to explain himself
Speaker 1: to us or to the women in his life. But
Speaker 1: it's important to know because to understand how Koshoki died,
Speaker 1: we need to unpack the logistical details around the engagement
Speaker 1: to Turkish scholar Hatija Sindas because to get legally married
Speaker 1: in Turkey, Kashogi needed paperwork, and to get that paperwork,
Speaker 1: Kashoki had to go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Speaker 1: On Friday, septem eighteen, Jamal Ko Shogi didn't make an
Speaker 1: appointment to visit the Saudi consulate. He just walked in
Speaker 1: and to kashogi surprise, he was greeted warmly. After years
Speaker 1: of experiencing harassment and intimidation from the government, which had
Speaker 1: ultimately forced him to live in exile. Kaushogi found himself
Speaker 1: being offered tea by the Saudi officials in Istanbul. They
Speaker 1: told him to come back Tuesday, October two to get
Speaker 1: the final paperwork. In the last five days, Kashogi was alive.
Speaker 1: He lived like a freeman. He traveled to London for
Speaker 1: a conference, made plans for the future. He was emailing
Speaker 1: his editors at the Washington Post, bloodsapping with friends across
Speaker 1: the world, texting with Hanan, and arranging logistics with Hatch.
Speaker 1: Back in Istanbul. The morning of Tuesday October two, two eighteen,
Speaker 1: Kashogi met Hatija at an empty apart mint in his
Speaker 1: tample one that would be their new home. CCTV captured
Speaker 1: the couple holding hands on their walk to the Saudi consulate.
Speaker 1: They went together to the points to look and it's
Speaker 1: in a quiet, leafy, very pretty residential area. This is
Speaker 1: Carlotta Golf, the bureau chief of the New York Times
Speaker 1: in Istanbul, who reported on the Jamaica Shogi case. He
Speaker 1: handed her his bones and goes in, and so she
Speaker 1: waited outside. It was one four pm when Kashogi entered
Speaker 1: the consulate, and then that was the last only one
Speaker 1: sort of thing, um, and then she's hanging around for
Speaker 1: hours after until finally it's clear that concerts closed and
Speaker 1: she asks the god. They say there's no one here.
Speaker 1: She asks the police and you say everyone's gone. And
Speaker 1: that's when she started. And then it calls to people.
Speaker 1: Her teacher made many calls that night, including some to journalists,
Speaker 1: which is how Carlotta got the tip. Because Shogi had
Speaker 1: disappeared from the Saudi consulate. The next day, I went
Speaker 1: up to consulate and that's where I ran into her
Speaker 1: teacha and she was sort of still there, pacing sidewalk,
Speaker 1: and she'd been there all that previous night, and then
Speaker 1: um was outstanding outside the whole one next day, and
Speaker 1: I was the first interview she gave in. But actually
Speaker 1: when she saw me, she just started to open up
Speaker 1: the society dissidents who wouldn't go near a Saudi concert
Speaker 1: or embassy. I knew there were stories of previous kidnappings.
Speaker 1: I was thinking he might have been taken out in
Speaker 1: the trunk of a car, and I was imagining she
Speaker 1: had been taken to an airport, private airport, and already
Speaker 1: deport or renditioned, as the word goes what happened from
Speaker 1: Jamaica security camera captured the last time journalist Jamaica Shogi
Speaker 1: was seen a lot. The group of senators is also
Speaker 1: written to trigger an investigation. The State Department says that
Speaker 1: is premature. Dana Priest remembers the day Jamaka Shogi went missing.
Speaker 1: My mind kept flashing back to the two of us.
Speaker 1: We were seated around this gigantic, empty table very you know,
Speaker 1: beautiful white tent, white tablecloth. That face kept coming back
Speaker 1: to me, and I just kept saying, what in the
Speaker 1: hell could have happened in there? You know, in no
Speaker 1: way could I have imagined what was happening? Mm hmm yeah.
Speaker 1: As news of Kashogi's disappearance spread across the world, local
Speaker 1: reporters on the scene in Istanbul, including Carlotta Gal, We're
Speaker 1: working together to get more information, but none of us
Speaker 1: had any idea of what really had happened. We pieced
Speaker 1: together what happened, almost like who done it? For one week,
Speaker 1: Jamaka Shogi remained unaccounted for. The Saudi government evaded questions
Speaker 1: about his disappearance. It was as if he had vanished
Speaker 1: into thin air. And then Turkish intelligence released secret tapes.
Speaker 1: So We've been able to piece together the last minutes
Speaker 1: of Kashogi's life. Be warned, it's quite explicit. Major breaking
Speaker 1: news this morning, A jaw dropping exclusive on the murder
Speaker 1: of Washington Post journalist Jamaka Shogi. New footage that is
Speaker 1: flat out shocking. Lying in white inside was a Saudi
Speaker 1: hit squad. The transcript indicates noises as people set upon
Speaker 1: KOI can be heard saying I can't breathe. Kashogi was
Speaker 1: then injected with a sedative and suffocated with a plastic
Speaker 1: bag brought with them an autopsies expert and a bone
Speaker 1: sawed to put the body in a bug no too heavy,
Speaker 1: very cool. Kagi was allegedly beheaded and dismembered limb by Limb,
Speaker 1: apparent leader of the team. May at least three phone
Speaker 1: calls during the murder to a number of Turkish officials
Speaker 1: identify as being in the Saudi Royal court. The thing
Speaker 1: is done, It's done. It is possible that Jamal's body
Speaker 1: was transported back on on one of the planes. A
Speaker 1: lot of meat was bought for a barbecue that took
Speaker 1: place in the console's garden just after the murder took place,
Speaker 1: and that the theory being that Jamal's body was mixed
Speaker 1: with this meat and incinerated at a very high temperature.
Speaker 1: And it's still kind of appalls me that we were
Speaker 1: standing there in the street outside this building where this
Speaker 1: unbelievable murder had already occurred, you know. And I still
Speaker 1: think of that of Paul her dj to think that
Speaker 1: she was just standing there while he was being hacked
Speaker 1: to death inside. And I'm sure she's still thinks about
Speaker 1: every day. Koshoki's murder caused an international uproar. The grizzly
Speaker 1: details came out because Turkish intelligence admitted that they had
Speaker 1: been bugging the Saudi consulate. The Turk shared the tapes
Speaker 1: with the u N so the world would know what
Speaker 1: had happened to Jamal ka Shogi. Investigations by both the
Speaker 1: u N and the CIA unequivocally linked Kashoki's murder with
Speaker 1: direct orders from inside the Saudi Kingdom. We have breaking
Speaker 1: news this afternoon. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mommed Bin Salman
Speaker 1: approved the assassination of Washington Post columns jamalka In. In
Speaker 1: one of Kashi's last columns for the Washington Post, he wrote,
Speaker 1: what the Arab world needs most is free expression. It
Speaker 1: has been four years since Kashoki's murder, and the link
Speaker 1: to the Crown Prince is just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: That's after the break after or his murder, there were
Speaker 1: a number of roundups of Saudis whose numbers appeared in
Speaker 1: the phones of people who were around Jamal. But I
Speaker 1: believe the Saudis picked up and in this case detained
Speaker 1: for months and months people who were in contact with
Speaker 1: some of the people the Jamals in contact with. So
Speaker 1: you're seeing this kind of ripple effect. You know, Jamal's
Speaker 1: in the middle, and then there's people who followed people
Speaker 1: who followed Jamal. What new evidence has revealed and what
Speaker 1: we are piecing together on this series is that Jamal
Speaker 1: ka Shogi was being tracked more deliberately than anyone ever imagined.
Speaker 1: Several of the people that he was in touching where
Speaker 1: surveyed by Pegasus. Pegasus has been linked to human rights
Speaker 1: abuses on ethical surveillance. The Pegasus spy where made by
Speaker 1: Israeli company and s O Group, has been used to
Speaker 1: target journalist, dissidents, and activists around The Pegasus spyware it
Speaker 1: is the most sophisticated spyware made to date. It was
Speaker 1: created by an Israeli tech company. It's marketed to governments
Speaker 1: as a way to target, track and capture criminals and terrorists.
Speaker 1: But our investigation shows that many confirmed targets of Pegasus
Speaker 1: are not criminals or terrorists. The big question remains, did
Speaker 1: Jamal ka Shogi have Pegasus on his phone? We may
Speaker 1: never be able to answer that questions phones are still
Speaker 1: with Turkish authorities more than four years after his death,
Speaker 1: but what we can do is examined the lives and
Speaker 1: the phones of those closest to him. We all obviously
Speaker 1: had an interest in knowing whether Pegasus was used in
Speaker 1: any way to surveil, track and then aid the killers
Speaker 1: in murdering Jamal ka Shogi. Dana Priests from the Washington
Speaker 1: Post as one of dozens of journalists working on the
Speaker 1: Pegasus project, a coalition of journalists and active that uncovers
Speaker 1: who has been infected with and surveilled by Pegasus, and
Speaker 1: together they found a list of confirmed cases, a list
Speaker 1: of phone numbers. Danna Priest was focused on finding out
Speaker 1: if any of them were connected to Jamal Kashogi. I
Speaker 1: drew a big circle of his friends and tried to
Speaker 1: get as many phone numbers that we could and we
Speaker 1: found about ten people. And then a colleague of mine
Speaker 1: Uh heard the post had was able to match a
Speaker 1: number that was in the database and was known to
Speaker 1: be associated with him, which was Hanan a latter. At
Speaker 1: that time, Hanan was really still in the background. Dana
Speaker 1: priests learned about Hanana latter three years after the death
Speaker 1: of Kashogi. How could Hanan's experiences reveal new information about
Speaker 1: the plot to murder Jamal Kashogi. Let's rewind to five
Speaker 1: months before the murder of Jamaica Shogy April. They took
Speaker 1: me to a horrible place in the border of Dubai
Speaker 1: called Allawire. I didn't know where I am because they
Speaker 1: blinded me and they handcuffed me. It was very high
Speaker 1: security place. I've never seen it in my life. And
Speaker 1: they took sample from my d n A from my mouth,
Speaker 1: They take a photo for me from different angle, They
Speaker 1: take a finger brand and then they took me to
Speaker 1: this room for investigation. When Hannan was taken by ui
Speaker 1: A government officials, they were looking for something on Hanan's
Speaker 1: phone during her interrogation. Till this moment, I don't know
Speaker 1: why they've taken me. I came to know why they
Speaker 1: took me because they have my phone with them in
Speaker 1: another room. They have my password, and he sent me
Speaker 1: a message and they came back to me and showed
Speaker 1: me and they said. In the middle of Hannan's interrogation,
Speaker 1: she received a text from Jama Kashogi. The officials saw
Speaker 1: the text and their questions took a different turn. They
Speaker 1: asked about Koshoki's colleagues, his friends, his plans. They wanted
Speaker 1: to know what he was working on and who he
Speaker 1: was working with. This interrogation continued into the morning. After
Speaker 1: seventeen hours, she was given back her devices and taken home.
Speaker 1: They put me on the house arrisk. They have my
Speaker 1: boss porst. They belelisted me and my family. My entire
Speaker 1: family could don't fly, and after that I couldn't know
Speaker 1: how to communicate with him. Amarati officials. Detaining a flight
Speaker 1: attendant in what appears to be a favorite of the
Speaker 1: Saudi government is a critical moment. Hanan understood that this
Speaker 1: was a bold act, but didn't know what it all
Speaker 1: meant for her or for Kashogi. After she was detained,
Speaker 1: she did not tell Jamal right away. She didn't want
Speaker 1: to tell him on the phone, but she didn't know
Speaker 1: who was listening to her, how they knew where to
Speaker 1: come and get her, and you know, so she was
Speaker 1: so afraid to talk to him and tell him what
Speaker 1: had happened. Hanan was under house arrest for several weeks
Speaker 1: after she was detained and interrogated by the Emeraldi intelligence
Speaker 1: and could not meet Jamal ka Shogi as they had
Speaker 1: planned in Washington, d C. But she didn't know how
Speaker 1: to tell him what had happened. Jamal went to airport Washington,
Speaker 1: DC airport was waiting for me in the airport. Suddenly
Speaker 1: he called me in Dubai. He told me, Hannan, I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for you and airport where are you? I said, General,
Speaker 1: I'm not coming. He said why. I said so, I
Speaker 1: tost me just I told him I could to understand
Speaker 1: what's is my situation. Hanan's Code is the name of
Speaker 1: an Egyptian actress. Both hananaka Shogi shared a love for
Speaker 1: Egyptian cinema and are very familiar with the star Suartstnik
Speaker 1: You did eat so what Hostne is often called the
Speaker 1: Cinderella of Egyptian cinema. In two thousand one, swat host
Speaker 1: Ny fell from an apartment balcony in London and died.
Speaker 1: Many believed she had ties to Egyptian intelligence officials and
Speaker 1: that she was pushed from the balcony. So what host
Speaker 1: me was? Han nonced code word to indicate she didn't
Speaker 1: trust their line of communication, and he said, so I
Speaker 1: tost me. He understood, He said, Hannah and you, I
Speaker 1: would protect you. They kept changing ways of communicating in
Speaker 1: an effort not to get surveilled. They used all sorts
Speaker 1: of things at different times. So signal EMU, what's that?
Speaker 1: A couple other things. They came and went. After two
Speaker 1: months on house arrest, Hanan was released and got her
Speaker 1: passport back. She was back to work okay, and went
Speaker 1: on a trip to the United States to meet Kashog.
Speaker 1: They had plans to get married. We got to marriage
Speaker 1: in June two thousand eighteen. They got married here in
Speaker 1: Washington where Jamal had a house an apartment in McLean, Virginia,
Speaker 1: and they were married in Islamics ceremony only in part
Speaker 1: to protect her and all. They didn't want to have
Speaker 1: any record in the civil courts that she even existed
Speaker 1: here in the United States. Hanan Kashi were married at
Speaker 1: a mosque, but they decided not to get a civil
Speaker 1: license as Hanan did not have residents in the US
Speaker 1: at the time. The summer of eighteen, Hannan tried to
Speaker 1: put her detention behind her. She was cautious but not paranoid.
Speaker 1: You think they are watching us in a hotel lobby
Speaker 1: or in our room, but she didn't move When we
Speaker 1: was in our room, Janal unplug the TV. This is
Speaker 1: what is the highest conscience for him about buying or
Speaker 1: watching or something. Once I remember he was trying to
Speaker 1: understood open in my bubile in case I'm an our
Speaker 1: house in Virginia and his mother there and they need
Speaker 1: to go around for my shopping or something. He tried
Speaker 1: to install Uber and he was going to put his
Speaker 1: credit card to number. Then he deleted and they said
Speaker 1: why you deleted German. He said, no, if they get
Speaker 1: the phone from you and Dubai Hannah, they can get
Speaker 1: get into my account. Hannan did not know what to
Speaker 1: do after Kashoki was murdered, and occasionally Amaradi intelligence officers
Speaker 1: will come by and ask questions, and then Jamal's killed
Speaker 1: and she has nowhere to go. She's frying for her life.
Speaker 1: She can't live in the U a e. Anymore, so
Speaker 1: she comes to the United States to talk to her lawyer,
Speaker 1: and her lawyers she just just stay here and we'll
Speaker 1: apply for political asylum. And so she is literally a
Speaker 1: forgotten woman. Here's this woman that has potentially so much
Speaker 1: evidence to share in her devices about Jamal's travels and
Speaker 1: who might have been tracking them, and who might have
Speaker 1: been complicit with the Saudias, and trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, what his travel plans were, what his other
Speaker 1: plans were, what he was thinking of doing, and nobody
Speaker 1: had ever contacted her. So I took your advices to
Speaker 1: a second group that does a lot of forensics, Citizen Lab.
Speaker 1: So we worked with Bill. I'm Bill Marzac, a senior
Speaker 1: research fellow at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. I
Speaker 1: study government surveillance, basically trying to determine which governments are
Speaker 1: hacking activists, dissidents, civil society and trying to defend civil
Speaker 1: society against this this hacking. Bill Marzac is one of
Speaker 1: the first people to discover Pegasus. He would need to
Speaker 1: look at Hanan's phone. Who when I've been approached first
Speaker 1: to cool from Washton Post. They asking me to corporate.
Speaker 1: The exciplent to me is they need my devices? I
Speaker 1: did hand it over. Bill has experience reverse engineering Pegasus
Speaker 1: and knew exactly what to look for examining Hanan's phone.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much the only thing you can do when
Speaker 1: you get a sample of something that might be interesting
Speaker 1: spyware is you have to run it yourself and see
Speaker 1: what happens. And I was monitoring the phone's Internet traffic,
Speaker 1: so I was seeing everything that came into the phone
Speaker 1: that left the phone. When I was monitoring the Internet traffic,
Speaker 1: a bunch of weird traffic going to the spiral website
Speaker 1: like it was downloading stuff. It was uploading stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that was sort of the first key that Oh wow,
Speaker 1: so far as closed, but this connectivity is still happening
Speaker 1: and it's sending information back. Pegasus can bypass any encryption
Speaker 1: because it uses a loophole in a phone software to
Speaker 1: be an incognito but active parasite. When Pegasus is on
Speaker 1: a phone, Bill can see the evidence of it right away.
Speaker 1: You can turn on the microphone to snoop in on
Speaker 1: conversations happening around the device. You can take pictures through
Speaker 1: the webcam. You can get passwords, you can get WhatsApp messages,
Speaker 1: you can get signal messages, you can record calls, you
Speaker 1: can track GPS, you can do other things with the
Speaker 1: phone sensors. It was full access to the phone. And
Speaker 1: there was something else they knew from the types of
Speaker 1: text messages she had been sent, which had already been
Speaker 1: identified as Pegasus bait, that they had tried to target
Speaker 1: her uh several times. So why did the Emeraldi intelligence
Speaker 1: officers detain Hanan a ladder and question her overnight. It
Speaker 1: turns out they had been trying to trick Hanan into
Speaker 1: downloading Pegasus herself. She had received random texts in the
Speaker 1: months prior to her detention, but she never clicked on
Speaker 1: the links. The bait to get Hanan to infect her
Speaker 1: phone in two thousand eight teen were things like, you
Speaker 1: have a package downtown at this address, Click here and
Speaker 1: tell us that you want us to send it to you.
Speaker 1: There was a message from her sister saying, oh, here's
Speaker 1: a photo, click this to see the photo. And then
Speaker 1: there was one saying you have a bouquet of flowers
Speaker 1: waiting for you. Click this and we will get them
Speaker 1: to you. Then Dana Priest had to tell her non
Speaker 1: the truth that she had spywear on her phone and
Speaker 1: that she'd had it since April, since the day she
Speaker 1: had been detained. When I recalled the moment this happn't
Speaker 1: I took and I feel like my life force in
Speaker 1: in a green affront of them. I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: people miss use this technology, the be able who humped
Speaker 1: my husband and humped me. The Hamaradi intelligence officials had
Speaker 1: full access to Hanan's phone every part of her life
Speaker 1: for five months before Koshoi was killed. No matter the
Speaker 1: steps Hanan had taken, the codes she had used, or
Speaker 1: the length she had gone to protect Koshogi, they could
Speaker 1: still watch her, and they did. I was feeling very
Speaker 1: bad and I'm still feeling very bad. Hanan is still
Speaker 1: trying to get Koshogis devices from the Turkish authorities. In
Speaker 1: addition to Hanana Lader, others close to Jamal Ka Shogi
Speaker 1: have also discovered Pegasus on their phones. Every detail of
Speaker 1: their digital footprint was surveiled, including Koshogi's Turkish fiance, teacher
Speaker 1: Sings I blamed myself a lot, and Kashogi's close friend
Speaker 1: Omar Abdulla Ziz, a fellow outspoken Saudi journalist living in
Speaker 1: exile in Canada. All of their correspondences were monitored. The
Speaker 1: hacken of my phone played the major role what happened
Speaker 1: to jama that. On the next episode of Shoot the Messenger,
Speaker 1: we find out how Omar Abduaziz found out he was
Speaker 1: being hacked and discovered more than four hundred of his
Speaker 1: text messages with Jamaica Shogi were compromised. We'll go into
Speaker 1: how this technology works and how Pegasus was first discovered.
Speaker 1: On this series, we investigate how Pegasus byware came to be,
Speaker 1: what its capabilities are, and ask how does it implicate
Speaker 1: ordinary people. Over the next nine episodes will follow the
Speaker 1: thread of Pegasus to understand how it was intended to
Speaker 1: be used, how it's abused, and the impact of its surveillance.
Speaker 1: Pegasus spyware has been a boom for the cyber surveillance
Speaker 1: industry and it's impacted the global economy. If you live
Speaker 1: in the US and have mutual funds or pension, your
Speaker 1: money could be supporting the organization that makes Pegasus spyware.
Speaker 1: You've heard about Jamaica Shogu, but there are so many others.
Speaker 1: Others who have been targeted and hacked, blackmailed or humiliated,
Speaker 1: who have been hunted and killed. Some of the names
Speaker 1: you may recognize, like Emmanuel mccron, the president of France,
Speaker 1: or Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. And then there
Speaker 1: are stories you haven't heard about. I know, I don't
Speaker 1: long her felt safe. Do you know if they got
Speaker 1: the information that they were looking for. I don't think
Speaker 1: they were looking for any information. I think it was
Speaker 1: a form of psychological warfare. I would get a phone
Speaker 1: call from someone, but you never anyone on the end
Speaker 1: of the phone. They would try to track my GPS.
Speaker 1: It does seem like it's always your favorite people who
Speaker 1: are being hacked and followed. We have to be way
Speaker 1: more careful even about things like this. How do I
Speaker 1: know who you are? It's kind of like the nuclear
Speaker 1: era before there were nuclear arms treaties. Are you saying
Speaker 1: that you think these texts I'm getting are Pegasus? Do
Speaker 1: you think I'm being targeted? Oh? For sure. Now it
Speaker 1: don't make sense that it's on season one of Shoot
Speaker 1: the Messenger. Shoot the Messenger is a production of Exile
Speaker 1: Content Studio. We are distributed by PRX, hosted and produced
Speaker 1: by me rose Red with Nando Vila, Sabine Jansen, Nora Kibness,
Speaker 1: Zak Kirsch, and Anna Isabel Octavio. Written by Me rose
Speaker 1: Red with story editing by Nando Vila, Danny Sadia, Jen Atschell,
Speaker 1: zak Kirsch, and Rachel Ward. Production assistant by Avros Saspettis
Speaker 1: Andrea Zavaios, Jen Shipman, Stella Emmett and Aaron Reese. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Sonic Union and Gail and Matthew Reid. Sound
Speaker 1: design and mixing by Patti Knos Daniel Batista, Overseas audio
Speaker 1: at Exile Content Studio. Executive producers are myself rose Red
Speaker 1: with Nando Vila, Carmen Gradol and Isaac Lee. For more
Speaker 1: information on the status of journal US and freedom of
Speaker 1: the press, visit the Committee to Protect Journalists at CPJ
Speaker 1: dot org. To learn more about Exile and our other
Speaker 1: podcasts and films, visit Exile content dot com. The next
Speaker 1: episode is out now. Subscribe so you can hear every
Speaker 1: twist and turn of this ten part series. You can
Speaker 1: find Exiles, Shoot the Messenger, Espionage Murder, and Pegasus Spyware
Speaker 1: anywhere you get your podcasts.