Ho deriso il leader saudita su YouTube, poi il mio telefono è stato violato e sono stato picchiato a Londra

The first thing al-Masarir noticed was that his phones were behaving weirdly. They had become very slow, with the batteries running out quickly.

Then he noticed seeing the same faces appear in different parts of London. People who seemed to be Saudi regime supporters began stopping him in the street, harassing and filming him. But how did they know where he was all the time?

Al-Masarir feared his phone was being used to spy on him. Cyber experts would later confirm he’d become the latest victim to be spied on with the infamous Pegasus hacking tool.

“It was something that I couldn’t comprehend. They can see your location. They can turn on the camera. They can turn on the microphone, listen to you,” al-Masarir tells the BBC. “They got your data, all pictures, everything. You feel you’ve been violated.”

On Monday, after six years of legal battles, the High Court in London ruled Saudi Arabia was responsible, and ordered the kingdom to pay al-Masarir more than £3m ($4.1m) in compensation.