UN calls for probe into alleged Saudi hack of Bezos
The United Nations on Wednesday drew a line between the hacking of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone and coverage of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the killing of a Washington Post journalist, calling for a further investigation.
Two United Nations human rights experts said a deeper probe was needed to look into allegations that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince was behind the alleged hack on Bezos, who owns The Washington Post.
Hacking allegations: The UN’s statement comes a day after The Guardian first reported that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman gained access to Bezos’s phone via a Whatsapp message.
“The information we have received suggests the possible involvement of the crown prince in surveillance of Mr. Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post’s reporting on Saudi Arabia,” the two human rights experts said in a statement on Wednesday.
The two tied the hacking to the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which multiple international and American intelligence organizations have pinned on Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi was a journalist at the Post.
The UN’s concerns: Agnes Callamard, UN special rapporteur on summary executions and extrajudicial killings, and David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, issued the joint statement on Wednesday.
They emphasized that “the alleged hacking of Mr. Bezos’s phone, and those of others, demands immediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities, including investigation of the continuous, multi-year, direct and personal involvement of the crown prince in efforts to target perceived opponents.”
The two UN experts recently became aware of the alleged hacking of Bezos’s device through a 2019 forensic analysis of his phone that assessed with “medium to high” confidence that it was infiltrated in March 2018 through an MP4 file sent from bin Salman’s WhatsApp account to Bezos. According to the analysis, exfiltration of data from Bezos’s phone began within hours of the MP4 file being sent over.
Saudi Arabia’s response: Saudi Arabia has denied the hacking.
“Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos’ phone are absurd,” the account tweeted. “We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out.
