French Le Monde said that the Saudi hacking of the phone of the Amazon founder and its president, Jeff Bezos - who owns the Washington Post - will be an amazing story of espionage, its explosive developments, and shocked her from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
The newspaper added that this issue could undermine the efforts of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to attract more Western investors to Saudi Arabia, in the context of his promise to transform the kingdom economically, despite his supervision of a crackdown on critics and rivals.
According to Le Monde, the infiltration of Bezos led to the publication of intimate photos of the billionaire owner Malik in which the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, known for his criticism of Riyadh, was written before he was assassinated on 2 October 2018 by the consulate in Istanbul.
Demands an immediate investigation
"The alleged breach of Bezos' phone and others requires immediate investigation by the United States and other relevant authorities," two UN experts said on Wednesday.
Anis Kalamar (Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions) and David Kay (Freedom of Expression) were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to clarify this issue, although they do not speak officially for the United Nations.
According to Le Monde, the two experts demanded that the investigation include "the direct and personal participation of the Crown Prince in the efforts to target the alleged opponents," noting that the alleged penetration "strengthens reports on a monitoring program targeting those believed to be opponents of strategic importance in the eyes of Riyadh."
Silence the Washington Post
The two experts said they had received information "indicating the Crown Prince's involvement in Bezos monitoring, as part of efforts to influence the way the Washington Post reports Saudi news, or perhaps to silence it."
| Two UN experts: Alleged phone penetration of Bezos and others requires immediate investigation by Washington and others (Al-Jazeera) |
The UN rapporteur also estimated that the circumstances of this alleged breach revealed that a thorough investigation was needed into "allegations that the crown prince commanded or encouraged or at least was fully aware of the preparations" for the Khashoggi killing.
Le Monde said that the two experts were able to reach the conclusions of the technical analysis conducted in 2019 for the Bezos-owned iPhone, and showed the exchange of the crown prince and the president of Amazon company their phone numbers the month before the digital infiltration early May 2018.
Hack a video
On this date - the newspaper says - the Amazon founder received an MP4 video file from an account used by the Saudi crown prince, and shortly after that a large amount of data was pulled from the Bezos phone, according to the Washington Post.
The analysis showed that this withdrawal of data continued unnoticed for several months, and that the hackers appeared to have used some kind of spyware used in other Saudi surveillance cases, such as the Pegasus 3 program designed by the Israeli "NSO" group.
The newspaper pointed out that the investigation that will be carried out by international experts supports the conclusions reached by the experts appointed by Bezos, where the American billionaire appointed "Gavin de Baker and Associate" company to find out how his letters and pictures reached the newspaper "National Enquirer" that published the emotional messages exchanged between him and him Former TV presenter Lauren Sanchez has an extramarital affair with him, leading him to divorce.
Difficult questions for Riyadh
Le Monde suggested that this news would lead to further damage to relations between Bezos and Riyadh, despite the Saudi embassy in the United States denying all this information on Twitter and describing them as "ridiculous" allegations, but rather asked the Saudi Foreign Ministry to conduct an investigation "so that these facts can be highlighted."
The French newspaper warned that Riyadh denied its responsibility for the assassination of Khashoggi - who was widely covered by the Washington Post - before it later recognized it and conducted an investigation.