The main line
A former Twitter employee was convicted in federal court on Tuesday of providing the Saudi Arabian government with information about the social media accounts of regime critics, according to multiple news outlets, as the kingdom faces criticism over its efforts to strike down dissent – a game that has sometimes extended beyond the Arabian Peninsula.
A sign has been posted outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Key facts
Jurors in San Francisco found Ahmad Abouammo, 44, guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign government, forgery, two counts of money laundering and two counts of wire fraud on Tuesday, but acquitted him of five counts. others for wire fraud. a decision form obtained by Courthouse News.
In a two-week trial that ended Thursday, prosecutors alleged that Abouammo — whose two-year tenure at Twitter ended in 2015 — accepted cash payments and a luxury watch in exchange for looking up email addresses, phone numbers and other private data of people who had used Twitter to anonymously criticize Saudi Arabia.
Federal officials arrested Abouammo in October 2019 and also charged two other defendants believed to be in Saudi Arabia, including another former Twitter employee who was accused of providing private information to Saudi officials and a man who allegedly served as an intermediary for Saudi Arabia and the two Twitter employees.
According to New York Times.
Forbes has reached out to the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco and Abouammo’s attorney for comment.
Main background
Prosecutors say Abouammo was recruited to hand over the Twitter data by Bader al-Asaker, an aide to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman. It is one of several alleged efforts by Saudi officials to stifle criticism of the government, a practice that became particularly prominent after the 2018 assassination of Washington Post writer and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul (US intelligence agencies believe Mohammed bin Salman approved the killing, which Saudi Arabia has denied). Meanwhile, Saudi officials created a troll farm designed to stifle criticism on social media Times reported in 2018, and Israel’s NSO Group reportedly terminated its contracts with Saudi Arabia amid concerns that NSO spyware was being used to monitor dissidents. The crackdown has often clashed with the reformist image Mohammed bin Salman first cultivated: Under the crown prince’s leadership, Saudi Arabia lifted a widely criticized ban on women driving, but still kept a protesting activist in jail for nearly three years.
tangential
Over the past two years, the Justice Department has brought charges against several people accused of helping foreign governments suppress dissent. Iranian intelligence agents were accused of plotting to kidnap a critic of the Iranian regime who lives in New York, Belarusian officials were accused of piracy for forcing a commercial airliner carrying a dissident to land, five people were accused of spying on critics of the Chinese regime living in the United States and a China-based Zoom employee were accused of shutting down video calls commemorating the Tiananmen Square protests. In some of these cases, the defendants are not located in the United States, which can make it difficult to arrest or prosecute them.
Further reading
The Saudis’ Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider (New York Times)
