A former Twitter media relations manager faces up to 20 years in jail after being convicted of espionage for Saudi intelligence. The individual sent Riyadh information from key kingdom users, including journalists and celebrities.
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| [Ahmad Abouammo] |
In the middle of a court battle over Elon Musk's acquisition, Twitter would have been better off without this instance... of espionage. On Tuesday, a San Francisco court convicted Ahmad Abouammo, the firm's former head of media partnerships, guilty of spying on Facebook users on behalf of Saudi Arabia. The goal of Saudi intelligence is to gather information on persons who are critical of the regime and the royal family. Journalists, celebrities, public interest groups, and Middle Eastern companies are among them.
Between 2014 and 2015, a former Twitter employee would have given to a member of the royal family user data that was only available internally, such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, IP addresses, or browsing history. The California court determined that the guy would have earned $300,000 in exchange for a fancy watch worth 40,000 dollars. Ahmad Abouammo, a Seattle resident at the time, quit his prior employment in 2015.
"The evidence demonstrated that the defendant sold his position [as a Twitter employee] to a close ally of the Saudi royal family for money and while he thought he was doing this out of sight," US prosecutor Colin Sampson told the trial jury.
Across his defense, the ex-employee stated that he was performing his duties by assisting the social network in the Middle East and North Africa. The defendant, who was seized by the FBI in November 2019, faces a jail sentence of ten to twenty years for money laundering, fraud, and forgery of papers and deeds on behalf of a foreign government. His punishment will be read later.
When questioned by AFP, his lawyer, Angela Chuang, confirmed that a Saudi operation might have been established seven years ago to acquire information on opponents from Twitter employees. However, she claims that her client was tried instead of a specific Ali Alzabarah. According to the inquiry conducted by the court, this other ex-employee also gave information to Ryad during his tenure at Twitter in 2015. He was a Saudi national who had previously departed the United States without being apprehended.
"It is apparent that the defendants wanted by the American government are not there," Ahmad Abouammo's counsel argued in front of the jury. Concerning the quantities received by her client, she attempted to downplay them by characterizing them as "pocket money" for Saudis used to grandeur. Twitter declined to comment on the ruling when contacted.
Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch often accuse Saudi Crown Prince (and Deputy Prime Minister) Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of using his intelligence agencies to spy on, abduct, and even torture dissidents in the Kingdom. If the leader denies these claims each time, an American intelligence assessment would have shown his complicity in the Khashoggi crisis, named after the Saudi writer killed in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018.
On the international stage, Pariah Because of the scandal, the prince "MBS" returned to the diplomatic game during his July talks with American and French Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron. During his travel to France, the NGO Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the organisation Trial International filed a lawsuit with the Paris court for involvement in torture and enforced disappearance in connection with the journalist's killing.