Pegasus controversy: Dalai Lama’s advisors on list of potential targets

The closest circle of advisors around the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and staff members of other Buddhist clerics were selected as targets of potential surveillance by a client of the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group over two years, news website The Wire reported on Thursday. The leaked database showed that phone numbers of several Tibetan officials, activists and clerics were marked from late 2017 to early 2019.

The list includes numbers for the staff of the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorji, the third-highest ranking monk in Tibetan Buddhism, who has been living outside India since early 2017. Tempa Tsering, a long-term envoy of the Dalai Lama who currently serves as the director, India and East Asia, in his office in New Delhi,