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UN experts have called for an immediate probe into claims Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was the victim of a hack from a phone number used by Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Euronews reports. 

Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, received a message from a WhatsApp account connected to Prince Mohammad bin Salman, which contained an encrypted video file that infected his phone with malicious code, the UN experts said in a statement.

The Saudi embassy in the US called the allegations "absurd".

Agnes Callamard and David Kaye, both UN special rapporteurs appointed by the Human Rights Council, said the malicious software was sent to Bezos' phone "in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post's reporting on Saudi Arabia".

At the time of the hack, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi had written critically of Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince, Callamard and Kaye said, providing a timeline of editorial articles published by the journalist.

Khashoggi was later murdered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2018.

The hack allegedly occurred in May 2018 months after Bezos exchanged WhatsApp numbers with the crown prince at a dinner in Los Angeles.

The forensic analysis — conducted by global cybersecurity firm FTI consulting — found that the cellular data output of the phone increased by 29,156% after Bezos received the video file from the Crown Prince's WhatsApp account and concluded that Bezos' phone was likely hacked by Pegasus-3 malware, which was developed by Israeli tech firm NSO Group.

The Saudi embassy in the US called the hacking allegations and forensic analysis, which were first revealed yesterday by media outlets, "absurd".