New Delhi, Dec 20 (IANS): The mobile phone of a UN-backed investigator who was examining possible war crimes in Yemen was targeted with spyware made by Israels NSO Group, the Guardian reported citing a new forensic analysis of the device.

Kamel Jendoubi, a Tunisian who served as the chairman of the now defunct Group of Eminent Experts in Yemen (GEE)– a panel mandated by the UN to investigate possible war crimes, was targeted in August 2019, according to an analysis of his mobile phone by experts at Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the report said.

The targeting is claimed to have occurred just weeks before Jendoubi and his panel of experts released a damning which concluded that the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war had committed "serious violations of international humanitarian law" that could lead to "criminal responsibility for war crimes".

Jendoubi's mobile number also appears on a leaked database at the heart of the Pegasus Project, an investigation into NSO by the Guardian and other media outlets, which was coordinated by Forbidden Stories, the French non-profit media group.

The leaked list contained numbers of individuals who were believed to have been selected as potential surveillance targets by NSO's government clients, the report added.