Documents obtained by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) and Israeli newspaper Haaretz reveal how the Bangladesh government spent at least $330,000 on phone-hacking equipment made by an Israeli company, even though the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.
Developed by the Cellebrite security firm, UFED is a product that is capable of accessing and extracting data from a wide range of mobile phones. Its ability to hack encrypted phone data has worried civil rights campaigners, who have long called for its use to be more strictly regulated.
Bangladesh does not recognise the state of Israel, forbids trade with it and prevents its citizens from travelling there. The Muslim-majority country officially stands in solidarity with the Palestinians on the basis they are denied civil rights and live under Israeli military occupation.
4 Feb 2021
The United Nations is calling for a full investigation into evidence of corruption and illegality involving the Bangladesh army, which was exposed during an investigation released by Al Jazeera on Monday.
The corruption involves Bangladesh’s Chief of Army Staff, General Aziz Ahmed, who is due to meet senior UN officials in New York next week.
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In All the Prime Minister’s Men, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit revealed that Bangladesh’s military purchased sophisticated and highly intrusive mobile phone surveillance equipment from Israel, which Bangladesh military commanders claimed was “for one of the Army Contingents due to be deployed in the UN Peacekeeping Mission”.