Samvel Farmanyan

Affiliated media: ArmNews TV, Co-founder

Incident date: May 30, 2023

Attack type:

• Wiretapping / surveillance without a court decree

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists

Location: Armenia, Yerevan

Additional information:

Pegasus spyware was used to surveil at least five Armenian members of the press who covered the country’s military conflict with Azerbaijan. The report, “Hacking in a war zone: Pegasus spyware in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict,” identified at least 12 people whose devices were infected by Pegasus, spyware produced by the Israeli company NSO Group. Many of the infections clustered around the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and its subsequent escalations. The targets included Armenian human rights activists, academics, and state officials, two media representatives who requested to be kept anonymous, and three named journalists: Karlen Aslanyan, a reporter with the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster RFE/RL’s Armenian service, Radio Azatutyun; Astghik Bedevyan, a reporter with Radio Azatutyun and Samvel Farmanyan, co-founder of the now-defunct independent broadcaster ArmNews TV.