Saudi Arabia denies involvement in Jeff Bezos phone hacking

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday dismissed reports suggesting that the Kingdom’s powerful crown prince was behind the phone hacking of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner, Jeff Bezos.

“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,’’ the Saudi embassy in Washington wrote in a tweet.

The Guardian reported on Tuesday it was “highly probable’’ that Bezos’ mobile phone was hacked in 2018 after he received an infected video file via WhatsApp from the number used by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has previously denied it hacked Bezos’ phone.

Bezos is the owner of the Washington Post newspaper, whose columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

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The newspaper has covered the death, the investigation and the political fallout closely.

Officials in Riyadh have repeatedly said Mohammed had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s death and described it as a “rogue operation.”

In December, five people were sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi’s murder.

Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, who investigated the Khashoggi case, and David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion & expression, were due to deliver a statement.

Kaye wrote that they would be addressing “these very serious hacking allegations’’.

(dpa/NAN)