UN: Saudis hacked Amazon CEO

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was likely responsible for the hacking of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ phone, experts with the United Nations said on Wednesday. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, exchanged numbers with the crown prince at a dinner in California in 2018. Investigators said the Saudis hacked the phone after Bezos received a video file from Crown Prince Mohammed’s WhatsApp account.

What did the Saudis want? Saudi government agents killed Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a vocal critic of the crown prince, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul five months after the phone was hacked. Evidence suggests the crown prince may have overseen spying on Bezos “in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post’s reporting on Saudi Arabia,” independent UN experts said, calling on the United States to conduct a full investigation.

Dig deeper: Read Harvest Prude’s report in The Stew about how the crown prince has tried to win favor with American evangelicals.