This week different news organisations published what was supposed to be a bombshell accusing a number of countries of using Pegasus - a software for surveillance - on their citizens, mainly human rights activists and journalists. Rwanda was among the African countries that were accused of using the software.
On July 19, The Guardian published "Hotel Rwanda activist’s daughter placed under Pegasus surveillance”, and The Washington post reported that Jean Paul Turayishimye, an RNC agent living in the US, had been targeted as well. Remarkably, only Rwanda received the special attention of Amnesty International; the organization released a special note titled, "Rwanda authorities chose thousands of activists, journalists and politicians to target with NSO spyware,”, which was published on its website also on July 19.
All these stories share one thing in common: "There’s no evidence” that any of their phones was hacked, they all write. Yet, they accuse.
The report claims that, globally, a list of 50,000 names were potential targets of the Pegasus attacks. Of these, Amnesty international accessed 67 phones that it forensically examined, and confirmed that 37 had traces of a Pegasus attack. According to the CEO of NSO, Shalev Hulio, the company that owns the software, "There is something fundamentally wrong with this [Amnesty] investigation.”
"We weren't sent a list of all these 37 numbers that were supposedly attacked by Pegasus. They only sent us some of them, and of that list, none are numbers connected to Pegasus,” Hulio said.
Rwanda says it doesn’t own the technology. Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr Vincent Biruta told The Washington Post, "Rwanda does not use this software system … and does not possess this technical capability in any form. These false accusations are part of an ongoing campaign to cause tensions between Rwanda and other countries, and to sow disinformation about Rwanda domestically and internationally.”
However, if Rwanda did own the software, it would be among 45 countries that use the technology to "prevent terror and crime,” the majority of which are European countries according to Hulio. He added that "There are 90 countries which we chose not to work with,” because they do not meet the standards of use, whose violation leads to termination of the contract. NSO "restricts licensing of its products to countries that respect human rights and those deals are concluded only after rigorous investigations,” The Washington Post further quotes Shalev.
Hungry for attention and relevance
The most astonishing aspect of the 3500 individuals that Rwanda is accused of having targeted, the media could only corroborate its stories with those who were not part of the list, but upon sensing an opportunity to get in the news, took their own phones to Amnesty International, requesting to be part of the story. Even when it was confirmed that their phones had not been hacked, the media still wrote sensationalist titles stating that the opposite had happened while burying the truth.
Rusesabagina’s daughters saw a chance to insert themselves in the news cycle, and rushed to Amnesty in the now fading hope that they can pressure the government to release their father, whose case is in courts along with 20 co-accused for terrorism in Nyabimata sector, Southern Rwanda.
"There is no evidence that Anaise Kanimba’s phone was hacked,” the Guardian writes, regarding Rusesabagina’s daughter who had presented her phone. "At her request,” according to The Washington Post, Carine Kanimba rushed her phones to Amnesty International, basically pleading with them to confirm that her phones had been attacked.
Not to be outdone, RNC operatives, Jean Paul Turayishimye and David Himbara, the former RNC intelligence chief and its chief propagandist, respectively, couldn’t let the Kanimba’s enjoy the limelight alone. But when Turayishmye was asked to produce his phone to verify whether there had been attacks on it, he couldn’t find it! "He has since lost the iPhone that was on the list, making forensic examination impossible,” The Washington Post shamelessly wrote without asking him why he should be believed seeing that has an axe to grind against Kigali.
Himbara was even more embarrassing. "A forensic analysis of Himbara’s mobile phone by Amnesty International has not found any evidence that it was successfully hacked,” The Guardian wrote. But this did not stop Kampala’s anti-Kigali propaganda from going into overdrive, repeating Himbara’s smears, as they always do so on his blog that is dedicated to smearing the Kigali leadership.
In the end, Pegasus was not the scandal that Amnesty International and the media had made it out to be. It is a circus whose aim was yet again to pile pressure on the government to release their hero, Rusesabagina.
Carine and Anaise (Kanimba) can be excused for lying on behalf of their father who never taught them the importance of justice even when it is inconvenient and close to home. Moreover, along with Himbara and Turayishimye, they are tools in this campaign to release the terror suspect and to deny justice to his victims.