Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): In its comment on the Bahraini government relation with the Israeli NSO group, the Citizen Lab explained in its report issued on Tuesday that the government of Bahrain appears to have purchased NSO Group's Pegasus spyware in 2017.

The lab identified in "Hide and Seek" report published in 2018 a Pegasus operator spying entirely in Bahrain and Qatar that they referred to as PEARL, which had been active since July 2017.

The report mentioned that a massive global spike in Pegasus activity was observed in July 2020. The Lab began conducting research in a number of country contexts, including Bahrain and hunted for Pegasus in Bahrain by instructing targets to forward the lab their phone logs for analysis, and by setting up VPNs for key targets to monitor their Internet traffic.

The team confirmed that it analyzed the phone logs using forensic process, and found that nine devices belonging to nine Bahraini activists had been hacked.

In three cases, the team's forensic analysis concluded that the phones were hacked, but it was unable to establish an approximate date of the hacking.

Analysis is ongoing in these cases to see if a more precise date can be identified. In the remaining six cases, the analysis established some precise dates when Pegasus was active on the phones.

The report contains a table containing detailed information on the targeted activists and the periods of time they have been subjected to hacking. The two targets, Moosa Abd-Ali and Yusuf Al-Jamri, identified in London consented to be named, though all of the targets in Bahrain wished to be referred to by their affiliations only.

Arabic Version