Saudi crown prince’s WhatsApp linked to Bezos phone hack
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The cellphone of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos was hacked in what appeared to be an attempt by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince to “influence, if not silence” the newspaper’s reporting on the kingdom, two U.N. human rights experts said Wednesday.
The U.N. experts called for an “immediate investigation” by the United States into a report commissioned by Bezos that showed the billionaire technology mogul’s phone was likely hacked after he received an MP4 video file sent from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s WhatsApp account after the two men exchanged phone numbers during a dinner in Los Angeles in 2018.
The video file was sent to Bezos’ phone five months before Saudi critic and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October. At the time, the crown prince was being widely hailed for ushering in major social reforms to the kingdom, but Khashoggi was writing columns in the Post that highlighted the darker side of Prince Mohammed’s simultaneous clampdown on dissent.
The Post was harshly critical of the Saudi government after Khashoggi’s killing and demanded accountability in a highly public campaign that ran in the paper for weeks after his death.