A new report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) alleges Azerbaijan has been spying on hundreds of local activists and journalists, including RFE/RL reporters, using sophisticated software that gave the government access to their phones, Radio Free Europe reports.

Azerbaijan appears to have acquired Pegasus -- spyware that can record phone calls and read text messages, access photographs and passwords, track GPS data, and secretly make audio and video recordings -- from Israeli cybersurveillance company NSO Group, OCCRP said in the report, released on July 18.

The report on Azerbaijan came as part of sweeping research the OCCRP did on the NSO Group showing a leaked database of up to 50,000 phone numbers believed to have been identified as people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.

Based on the geographical clustering of the numbers on the leaked list, reporters identified potential NSO Group clients from more than 10 countries, including Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Togo, and the United Arab Emirates.

The OCCRP project made its assessment on Azerbaijan based on the hundreds of phone numbers of local reporters, activists, and opposition members that appeared in the leaked database of phone numbers that are believed to have been targeted by the Pegasus software.

While there is “no definitive proof” that Baku is an NSO client or that the leaked numbers represent people selected for targeting, OCCRP said “a preponderance of evidence suggests that this is the case.”

The OCCRP, a consortium of investigative centers, media, and journalists operating in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Central America, said that forensic analysis confirmed that the phones of two Azerbaijani citizens on the list were infected with Pegasus software.

Furthermore, several other Azerbaijani citizens on the list, including prominent opposition members, had personal information from their phones leaked to the public.

In response to a question about whether Azerbaijan acquired its software, NSO Group told OCCRP it could not confirm or deny the identity of government customers “due to contractual and national-security considerations.”

The OCCRP said that all but a few of the 245 Azerbaijani numbers identified belonged to journalists, activists, lawyers, and members of the country’s opposition.

Included in the broader leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers were those of journalists for media organizations around the world including Agence France-Presse, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, France 24, Mediapart, El Pais, the Associated Press, Le Monde, Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters, and Voice of America, according to The Guardian newspaper.