New Delhi: The University of
Cambridge has decided to call off a record deal worth 400 million pounds
with the United Arab Emirates because of the country’s alleged use of
Pegasus spyware, The Guardian has reported. If the deal had gone through, the report says, it would have been the largest donation in the varsity’s history.
In July, Cambridge had touted the proposed alliance as a “potential
strategic partnership … helping to solve some of the greatest challenges
facing our planet”.
Now, however, the university’s outgoing vice-chancellor Stephen Toope
has said that all talks with the UAE are suspended because of the
Pegasus revelations.
In July this year, a global consortium of media organisations including The Wire
released the Pegasus Project, an investigation into a leaked database
of potential targets of the spyware created and sold by the Israeli
company, NSO Group. The NSO Group has said repeatedly that it only sells
this highly invasive spyware, which can take control of a mobile phone,
to “vetted governments”.
The UAE is believed to be
responsible for potentially targeting several of UK numbers found on the
database. “The phones of Sheikh Mohammed’s daughter Princess Latifa and
his ex-wife Princess Haya, who fled the country and came to the UK in
2019, both appeared in the data,” Guardian reported.
“There were further revelations about Pegasus that really caused us
to decide that it’s not the right time to be pursuing these kinds of
really ambitious plans with the UAE,” Toope reportedly told a student
newspaper at Cambridge.
He also clarified that the university wasn’t likely to take this
money soon, “No one’s going to be rushing into this. There will be no
secret arrangements being made. I think we’re going to have to have a
robust discussion at some point in the future. Or we may determine that
it’s not worth raising again. I honestly don’t know.”
According
to Toope, he had never met the ruling crown prince. “There are existing
relationships across the university on a departmental and individual
academic level but there are no conversations about a big project,” he
said. “We’re aware of the risks in dealing with many states around the
world but we think it’s worth having the conversation.”
The Pegasus Project revelations were made public very soon after the Cambridge-UAE deal became public.
SOURCE ; THE WIRE
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