Nur-Sultan:
A major official in Kazakhstan has known as claims that Israeli-made spyware was deployed to monitor major officials which includes the present president “without evidence”, as a number of nations started probing the allegations.
Hungary, Israel and Algeria on Thursday joined France in announcing investigations into allegations that journalists, rights activists and 14 heads of state have been spied on applying computer software known as Pegasus created by Israel’s NSO Group.
But the deputy head of Kazakhstan’s presidential administration Dauren Abayev stated media reports on the list of targets leaked to rights groups have been no more than “rather intriguing information without any evidence” in the ex-Soviet state’s initially comments on the scandal.
“Realistically you can include anyone in this list, and thereby sow seeds of doubt in the country, among the elite, among journalists, and so on,” Abayev stated in an interview with the state broadcaster Khabar on Thursday.
The Israeli NSO Group’s Pegasus computer software — capable to switch on a phone’s camera or microphone and harvest its information — is at the centre of a expanding storm following a list of about 50,000 prospective surveillance targets was leaked to rights groups.
Amnesty International and French media nonprofit Forbidden Stories collaborated with a clutch of media organizations, which includes the Washington Post, the Guardian and Le Monde, to analyse and publish the list.
The widening scandal is drawing in nations from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to Morocco, India and a host of other mainly emerging economies.
In Kazakhstan’s case, reported targets of the computer software contain Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the present president, who was handpicked as a successor by the Central Asian country’s founding leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Other people on the list contain present Prime Minister Askar Mamin, the present mayor of Almaty city, Bakytzhan Sagintayev and the veteran civil activist Bakytzhan Toregozhina.
Mamin and Sagintayev have been crucial figures in Kazakhstan’s energy transition that started when Nazarbayev stepped down as head of state in 2019.
The 81-year-old has retained various influential positions which includes leadership of the ruling party Nur Otan and chairmanship of the safety council.
Upon inauguration, Tokayev proposed renaming the capital Astana “Nur-Sultan” in Nazarbayev’s honour — a alter that went into impact just about right away.
Toregozhina, a lengthy-time rights defender, wrote on Facebook Tuesday that she had “always known” that her communications have been getting tracked in a post that featured a winking emoticon.
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