UN investigators have called for an "immediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities" into any role Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had in hacking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone.

A report from the UN indicated that the crown prince's WhatsApp account sent Bezos a malicious file that may have stolen private information from his phone.

Crown Prince Mohammed, who is the de facto Saudi ruler, already faced UN scrutiny after being linked to the killing of the Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi.

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UN experts on Wednesday called for a full-fledged investigation of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, citing a report strongly suggesting the de facto Saudi ruler hacked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' personal phone.

The report, published Wednesday morning, indicates that in May 2018, about a month after the two exchanged numbers on WhatsApp, the crown prince's account sent Bezos a video file that appeared to contain malicious code suspected of stealing information from Bezos' phone.

The UN experts who wrote the report suggested the crown prince could have been targeting Bezos because of Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post, which ran stories critical of the Saudi government including by Jamal Khashoggi, the columnist who was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by Saudi operatives in October 2018. The crown prince is widely believed to be behind the killing, though he has blamed rogue agents.

"The information we have received suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince in surveillance of Mr. Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post's reporting on Saudi Arabia," the UN experts Agnes Callamard and David Kaye said in the statement, calling for an investigation of the crown prince.

Callamard and Kaye called for an "immediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities, including investigation of the continuous, multi-year, direct and personal involvement of the Crown Prince in efforts to target perceived opponents."

In a tweet on Wednesday, the Saudi government called the UN report's allegations "absurd" and called for "an investigation on these claims."

The UN report describes a yearslong campaign by the Saudi government intended to quash dissent and foment online outrage against perceived critics of the kingdom. Bezos was a frequent target of online attacks by those thought to be Crown Prince Mohammed's surrogates.

"The alleged hacking of Mr. Bezos's phone, and those of others, demands immediate investigation by US and other relevant authorities, including investigation of the continuous, multi-year, direct and personal involvement of the Crown Prince in efforts to target perceived opponents," the UN experts said in the statement.