Bangladesh: repressive regime is hooked on Israeli spyware 

Israeli spy firms have sold advanced surveillance equipment to Bangladesh in clandestine transactions over several years, an investigation by Haaretz has revealed. Firms under the control of the former commander of Israel’s intelligence technology unit are amongst several Israeli companies named in the investigation.

Bangladesh has no diplomatic relations with Israel and trade with the Zionist state is prohibited until it ends its military occupation of Palestine. Officially, the government in Dhaka does not recognise Israel and citizens are banned from travelling there until there is an independent Palestinian state.

Israeli government guidelines also prohibit the sale of advanced spyware technology to Bangladesh. Israel’s defence establishment is said to approve exports of classified technology to only a few countries. In previous years, the list of countries approved for cyber offensive exports has been whittled down to just 37, most of them Western democracies.

Despite such guidelines, though, Israeli spyware has ended up in the hands of some of the most oppressive regimes in the world who use the technology to crackdown on dissidents and political opponents. Such sales are so common that one of Israel’s spyware firm, NSO Group, became the centre of an international scandal involving the alleged phone hacking of more than 180 journalists, lawyers and human rights activists around the world. As many as 50,000 phone numbers were said to have been selected for surveillance using the Israeli spyware.

READ: US Court rejects Israel spyware’s bid for immunity in WhatsApp lawsuit

The NSO Group was backlisted by the administration of US President Joe Biden in 2021 but it has since found a way back under the far-right government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Haaretz investigation found that the questionable practices of the NSO Group which triggered global outrage are more common in Israel than it’s often presumed. Official government documents and international export records show that countries like Bangladesh see Israel as the perfect place to go on a “cyber shopping spree”. Documents dating from 2019 show that Bangladesh’s internal intelligence agency, the NSI, bought a system for intercepting Wi-Fi communications. Details of several other transactions using third countries to hide details of the sale are mentioned in the investigation.

The Haaretz investigation also indicates that the sale of Israeli spyware to Bangladesh is more prevalent than when first uncovered by Al Jazeera two years ago. It found that Israeli-made surveillance equipment sold via a convicted criminal is being used by the repressive Bangladeshi government to target the political opposition.