United Nations experts have called for an immediate investigation into allegations that Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in hacking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ phone in an attempt to “influence, if not silence” reporting on Saudi Arabia in the Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Bezos’ iPhone was likely hacked after he received an encrypted video file sent from a WhatApp account used by the prince in May 2018, a UN expert statement said on Wednesday. The video was sent to Bezos’ phone months before Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident, was murdered by Saudi government agents inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October. At the time, Khashoggi was writing columns in the Post that were critical of the Saudi government. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has said it’s certain that the crown prince directed the killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi. Within hours of clicking on the video file, “massive and (for Bezos’ phone) unprecedented exfiltration of data from the phone began,” according to a forensic analysis. The Saudi embassy has denied involvement in the hack. In a tweet, it said: “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.”

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