An IT Crowd: State Immunity And Spyware In Shehabi v Kingdom Of Bahrain

The Court of Appeal decision of Shehabi v Kingdom of Bahrain [2024] EWCA Civ 1158 is a fascinating appeal concerning a host of issues, from state immunity to statutory interpretation, and surveillance. The key issue was whether a foreign state whose agents, located abroad, caused spyware to be installed remotely on the devices of individuals in the United Kingdom (causing those individuals psychiatric injury upon discovering the state had been spying on them), was entitled to immunity from civil proceedings.

The claimants' case was that in September 2011, Bahrain's servants or agents, who operated remotely from outside the UK, hacked their computers with a spyware program called FinSpy. The claimants argued that this amounted to harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1977. Expert evidence supported the claimants' contention that the discovery of the hacking of their computers caused them a psychiatric injury. The first claimant was alleged to have