An investigation conducted by United Nations (U.N.) experts has determined that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hacked the cell phone of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2018 by sending a file to Bezos via the WhatsApp messaging service, according to the Washington Post:
“The report is expected to detail a forensic investigation into long-standing allegations by Bezos, the world’s richest man, that the Saudi regime launched a cyberattack on him as part of a complex series of conflicts among Bezos, the Saudis, President Trump and the National Enquirer tabloid.”
David Kaye, a special rapporteur at the U.N. has just released a documentary which gives details of how the Saudi Crown Prince managed to gain access to the phone belonging to Bezos:
“Bezos’s phone was infected with malware that was delivered via a message from Mohammed. Soon after the message was sent, investigators concluded, a massive amount of data was extracted from Bezos’s phone.”
Bin Salman, who is often referred to as MBS, was reportedly upset with Bezos because the Post, which he owns, had published several articles written by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for the Post who had been highly critical of the Saudi government and its repressive policies toward dissidents.
Khashoggi was invited to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, in October of 2018. He was allegedly beaten to death and then dismembered with a bone saw by Saudi security forces loyal to MBS.
The hacking of Bezos’s cell phone, however, allegedly occurred five months before Khashoggi’s murder.
All of this is a dramatic change from what had once been a warm friendship between Bezos and the Saudi government:
“After Trump picked Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip as president, and Mohammed visited the United States in early 2018, Bezos’s company continued its efforts to make a $1 billion deal to build three data centers for Amazon Web Services in the desert kingdom — a project that seemed to dovetail with the prince’s desire to expand his country’s participation in the global economy.”
President Trump has repeatedly defended the crown prince, saying he believes that MBS played no role in the killing of Khashoggi.
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