Overview
- The Supreme Court dismissed Bahrain’s appeal by a 3–2 majority on Monday, allowing the lawsuit by Saeed Shehabi and Moosa Mohammed to go to trial in UK courts.
- The two men say their London laptops were infected in 2011 with FinFisher/FinSpy, software that can steal files, log keystrokes, track locations and switch on microphones and cameras.
- Judges found modern remote surveillance can amount to acts ‘in the UK’ because the victims and their devices were in Britain when the spyware operated, overturning Bahrain’s state‑immunity claim.
- Bahrain denies the allegations, and the ruling follows earlier decisions that refused immunity in the High Court in 2023 and the Court of Appeal in 2024, so factual disputes will be resolved at trial.
- The decision may allow more suits against states that target people living in the UK and links to wider post‑2011 repression in Bahrain and a global wave of litigation over commercial spyware.