(COLOMBO, LANKAPUVATH) – UN human rights experts have demanded an immediate investigation into allegations Saudi Arabia’s crown prince hacked Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’s phone.
They said Mohammed bin Salman should also be investigated for “continuous, direct and personal efforts to target perceived opponents”.
A message from a phone number used by the prince has been implicated in a breach of Mr Bezos’s data.
The kingdom’s US embassy has denied the “absurd” story.
But the independent UN experts – Agnes Callamard, special rapporteur on summary executions and extrajudicial killings, and David Kaye, special rapporteur on freedom of expression – said the crown prince’s “possible involvement” had to be investigated.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Mr Bezos – who also owns the Washington Post – worsened after Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent critic of the Saudi government and one of the newspaper’s staff, was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
The killing took place months after the alleged cyber-hack took place.
Mr Bezos’s phone was hacked after he received a WhatsApp message in May 2018 that was sent from the crown prince’s personal account, according to the Guardian newspaper, which broke the story.
An investigation into the data breach reportedly found that the billionaire’s phone began secretly sharing huge amounts of data after he received the encrypted video file.
