Britain's Daily Mail newspaper quoted former British government officials as saying that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman probably exchanged messages via WhatsApp.
The newspaper added that the British Prime Minister refused to comment on this issue, while a Johnson spokesman said it was not possible to comment on the security arrangements for the ministers.
The British newspaper The Times reported that the disclosure of these data coincided with accusations of the Saudi crown prince of his involvement in hacking into the phone of the owner of the Amazon company, Jeff Bezos.
In a related context, the President of the Commission on Human Rights in the European Parliament, Maria Arena, called on the European Union to reconsider its attendance at the G20 Summit to be held in Riyadh in November.
The call came after the revelation of the piracy of the Saudi authorities, the phone of the founder, Jeff Bezos, and the owner of the Washington Post, and described this behavior as a matter of great concern.
She considered that this piracy is part of a broader pattern of Saudi monitoring of opponents, including journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was killed and his body cut in the Saudi consulate building in Istanbul.
She added that electronic hacking capabilities are a powerful tool to target and intimidate anyone who criticizes systems that violate human rights.
The International Committee to Protect Journalists said that the hacking of Jeff Bezos raised concerns about freedom of the press in Saudi Arabia and the violations it had affected.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has published a chronology in which it sheds light on what it described as the Saudi authorities ’attacks against the press since the Saudi Crown Prince took office in June 2017, most notable of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the imprisonment of dozens of journalists, as well as the use of computer malware software to penetrate the phones of dissident journalists. Abroad.
Earlier, the UN Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial killings Anis Calamar said that the circumstances surrounding the Bezos phone piracy operation were at the heart of the investigations into the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera, the UN rapporteur added that piracy took place at a time when Khashoggi was writing articles critical of the Saudi authorities, and considered that spying on Bezos and Saudi dissidents was contrary to international law.
Meanwhile, the American Wall Street Journal revealed on Thursday that officials close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had learned of Bezos' phone penetration plans, confirming that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating the incident.