Bezos breaks silence on Saudi phone hack controversy with photo of him mourning Khashoggi
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos tweeted a simple response to the controversy around the hacking of his cell phone, which reportedly happened after receiving a file sent from an account used by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
"#Jamal," he wrote on Twitter, with a photo of him mourning former Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government agents inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October, U.S. officials have said.
Bezos owns the Washington Post.
Two United Nations experts called for an "immediate investigation" by the U.S. into information that suggests that Bezos' phone was likely hacked after he received an MP4 video file sent from the Saudi prince's WhatsApp account in May 2018, after the two exchanged phone numbers at a dinner in California.
UN EXPERTS: JEFF BEZOS PHONE HACK SHOWS LINK TO SAUDI PRINCE
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, called the hacking allegations "absolutely illegitimate."
Bezos went public last February after allegedly being shaken down by the U.S. tabloid National Enquirer, which he said threatened to expose a "below-the-belt" selfie he'd taken and other private messages and pictures he'd exchanged with a woman he was dating while he was still married.
Bezos wrote in a lengthy piece for Medium that rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, "I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten." While he did not accuse Saudi Arabia's crown prince of being behind the hacking of his phone, he noted that the owner of the National Enquirer had been investigated for various actions taken on behalf of the Saudi government.
Bezos' chief investigator, Gavin De Becker, went further, saying in a published report last March that the investigation found the Saudis obtained the private data of Bezos. His piece for The Daily Beast outlined in detail what he said was the crown prince's close relationship with the chairman of AMI, David Pecker, which is the parent company of the National Enquirer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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