A British court has rejected Bahrain’s bid to ban espionage fighters Court Affairs

The ruling ensures that countries that use spying software on UK citizens can be prosecuted.

Britain’s High Court has rejected a request by Bahrain that Bahrain cannot protect the government from a spying case brought by two defendants.

The decision, which was passed on Monday by a majority of 3-2, sets an important precedent, confirming that foreign countries can be prosecuted in UK courts for spying on British citizens, even if the hacking itself originated abroad.

Saeed Shehabi, a journalist and the founder of a political party in Bahrain that opposes the rule of the Khalifa royal family, and Moosa Mohammed, a refugee from Bahrain, accused the Bahraini government of infecting their computers in 2011 with spying software known as FinSpy, which can hack keys, search locations and monitor their activities remotely.

Both men, who live in the UK, sued at the High Court in London in 2020, seeking damages for “mental injury”.

Bahrain denied the hacking and said the alleged incidents took place outside the UK, giving them immunity.

The High Court of Justice in London rejected the argument in 2023 in a decision handed down by the Supreme Court of Appeal the following year, giving Bahrain a final appeal to the Supreme Court.

In Monday’s ruling, the court found that the alleged incidents took place in the UK, saying that the plaintiffs’ computers were in Britain when the spyware allegedly began operating, paving the way for the case to go to trial.

The decision is part of a series of cases testing whether countries and companies can be prosecuted in Western courts for spying software sent to foreign defendants after similar cases, including the ongoing case of WhatsApp in the United States against the NSO Group on the Pegasus spyware.

Rights groups have long criticized Bahrain for its crackdown on dissidents and the media.