Intimidation

This story is little more than a brutal anecdote, which Patrick Radden Keefe has chosen to tell at excessive length. It has the kind of fact-checked gravity that indicates a star American journalist bent on perpetrating an entire book. (‘Built in 1923 and originally known as the Empire Stadium, Wembley was the most iconic sporting ground in Britain.’) But it occurred to me more than once as I read it that it has the hallmarks of a particularly black London comedy by Dickens or Ben Jonson or Joe Orton. A violent knave, his activities previously limited to cheating the police, murdering his equally appalling criminal rivals, doing underhand deals and ripping off the rich, acquires an associate.

In late 2018 a Saudi journalist living in exile in Canada, who liked to work out in between recording YouTube critiques of his government, ordered some protein powder online. When a text message landed on Omar Abdulaziz’s smartphone notifying him of a DHL delivery, he clicked on it without hesitating. The portrait Deibert paints is a million miles away from the Cold War binary world of John le Carré The DHL invitation was fake digital bait. By clicking on it, Abdulaziz had enabled Pegasus, a spyware program designed by a now infamous Israeli company, NSO Group.