The allegation that Saudi Arabia hacked Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s phone needs to be urgently probed by US and international authorities, investigators at the UN said as they repeated calls for a moratorium on the use of military-grade spyware against civilians.

The alleged attack on Mr Bezos’s privacy from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s WhatsApp account in May 2018 was probably linked to his ownership of the Washington Post and the subsequent murder of the newspaper’s columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the UN rapporteurs investigating his death said in a statement on Wednesday.

“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,” said the UN investigators David Kaye, who is probing the abuse of spyware by repressive regimes, and Agnès Callamard, who leads inquiries into extrajudicial killings.