Bahrain loses state immunity appeal in dissidents’ UK lawsuit over spyware

LONDON :Bahrain cannot claim state immunity to block a lawsuit brought in Britain by two dissidents who say its government hacked their laptops with spyware, London’s Court of Appeal ruled on Friday.
Saeed Shehabi and Moosa Mohammed say Bahrain infected their computers with surveillance software called FinSpy, which allowed agents to take control of their laptops, access their files and monitor their communications.
Shehabi and Mohammed, who both live in Britain, say Bahrain infected their laptops with FinSpy in around 2011, which allowed the kingdom to monitor their work with political prisoners in Bahrain, and are seeking damages for “psychiatric harm”.
Bahrain denies hacking Shehabi and Mohammed’s laptops. The state’s bid to claim state immunity was refused by the High Court last year.
Its appeal was dismissed on Friday, with Judge Stephen Males saying in a written ruling that “a foreign state which hacks a computer located in the United Kingdom interferes with the territorial sovereignty of the United Kingdom even if some of the acts in question take place abroad”.