Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ) expressed its solidarity with the journalist Suhair Jaradat.
CDFJ said: “We stand with our colleague Suhair Jaradat, that the international reports have revealed the hacking of her phone through spywares.”
Once again, CDFJ called on the government to form an independent committee to investigate the truth about the phones of journalists and activists, and Jordanian institutions being hacked and spied on.
CDFJ stressed that the allegations mentioned in the Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab reports, if proven true, constitute a violation of the rights to privacy and freedom of expression, and violate the guarantees in the constitution, and international treaties and conventions ratified by Jordan.
Jaradat told CDFJ that the information available to her, according to technical reports, indicate that her phone was hacked 7 times in February and December in 2021.
She added that the Open Source Association, in cooperation with Front Line Defenders, conducted a “Back Up” data recovery process for her phone, and after the examination, they had technical evidence of the penetration through a spyware.
Colleague Jaradat confirmed to CDFJ that no one from the government or official bodies contacted her to investigate about what she was exposed to.
A previous report, issued on 17 January 2022, indicated that public figures and activists were hacked through the “Pegasus” spyware, including a member of the Senate, Dr. Mustafa Hamarneh, Lawyer Hala Ahed, and Social Media Activist Dima Alam Faraj.
In a released statement, the National Center for Cyber Security denied the allegations made in the Front Line Defenders report about the presence of government agents targeting the phones of Jordanian citizens using the “Pegasus” spyware.