Cecilio Pineda Birto, murdered number selected by Mexican NSO client

On 2 March 2017, Cecilio Pineda Birto made a broadcast about alleged corruption. Hours later he was dead

The hitmen came for Cecilio Pineda Birto as he swung in a hammock at a carwash, waiting for his pickup to be cleaned.

The 38-year-old freelance reporter was shot dead on 2 March 2017 in Ciudad Altamirano, a town in the southern Mexican region of Tierra Caliente – a battleground for rival organised crime factions.

A few hours earlier, Pineda had in a broadcast on Facebook Live accused state police and local politicians of colluding with a violent local capo known as El Tequilero.

In previous weeks, Pineda had received a string of anonymous death threats. At about the same time, his mobile phone number was selected as a possible target for surveillance by a Mexican client of the spyware company NSO Group.

A successful infection enables an NSO client to access everything on the device, including contacts, chat messages – and precise location. Pineda’s phone disappeared from the scene of his murder, so a forensic examination to determine if it was targeted or infected with spyware was not possible.

The gunmen who murdered him could have learned of his location at a public carwash through means not related to NSO’s technologies, or its clients. But his attackers knew exactly where to find him, even though the hammock where he lay was not visible from the street.

“People with power can do whatever they want to anyone,” said his widow, Marisol Toledo, when told Pineda had been selected for potential targeting. “If they succeeded [in infecting his phone], they would have known where he was at all times.”

One of the alleged hitmen was found dead a few months later, but no one has been prosecuted over the murder.

NSO says its products are only licensed for use by its clients to fight serious crime and terrorism. Yet at least 26 Mexican journalists’ phone numbers appear on the leaked data suggesting persons of interest to NSO customers between 2016 and 2017.