Saudi Arabia denied hacking into Jeff Bezos' phone and called for an investigation into the 'absurd' claims
- Saudi Arabia has denied hacking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone, describing the claim as 'absurd."
- Saudi Arabia's US embassy called via Twitter on Wednesday for 'an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out.'
- According to a bombshell report in The Guardian, Jeff Bezos had his phone hacked by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in May 2018, via a link sent in a WhatsApp message.
- If the Guardian report is true, the link was sent just months before the October 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote for the Bezos-owned Washington Post.
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Saudi Arabia is denying hacking into Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone.
Its US embassy wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that "Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos' phone are absurd. We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out."
According to a bombshell report by The Guardian published Wednesday, Bezos allegedly had his phone hacked by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in May 2018 via a malicious video file sent during a WhatsApp conversation between the two men.
The hacking of Bezos' phone is the latest episode in a bizarre, mysterious saga that appears to relate to the Amazon CEO's ownership of The Washington Post.
That Bezos' communications were compromised first came to light with US tabloid The National Enquirer reported that he was having an affair with US news anchor Lauren Sanchez. The Enquirer published intimate texts, and snaps of the pair together. Bezos later wrote in a blogpost that he had been blackmailed by the publisher.
Bezos' head of security, Gavin de Becker, subsequently wrote that an internal investigation concluded that Bezos had been hacked by the Saudis. Saudi Arabia and the publisher of the National Enquirer, AMI, previously denied that Saudi officials were involved in the story.
The alleged phone hacking would also have occurred only five months before the murder of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who wrote for the Bezos-owned Washington Post. Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, and it is widely believed that Crown Prince bin Salman ordered his killing.
Two UN special rapporteurs, David Kaye and Agnes Callamard, are expected to release a statement and report on Bezos' hacking and Saudi Arabia's involvement on Wednesday.