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Ali
Alzabarah and Ahmad Abouammo, who used to work for Twitter, and
Ahmed Almutairi, who then worked for the Saudi royal family,
face charges of working for Saudi Arabia without registering as
foreign agents, according to the complaint filed against them on
Wednesday.
The indictment points an unusually public finger at Saudi
Arabia, a U.S. ally that maintains warm ties with President
Donald Trump despite its bad human rights record.
Saudi Arabia has not yet publicly remarked on the complaint.
King Salman met with the director of the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, in the capital Riyadh, the
state news agency said on Thursday. It gave no details on the
topics discussed at the meeting, which was also attended by the
Saudi foreign and interior ministers and the U.S. ambassador.
Many Republican and Democratic lawmakers are already deeply
critical of Riyadh's conduct of the war in Yemen and the 2018
murder at a Saudi consulate of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who
had U.S. residency and wrote for the Washington Post.
Despite the pressure, Trump has stood by the kingdom and its de
facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who appears in the
complaint as Royal Family Member-1, according to the Washington
Post, which initially reported the charges.
The charges also put Silicon Valley companies in the spotlight
once again over how they protect the intimate details they
collect about their users, including from employees with no
legitimate reason for accessing the information.
According to the complaint, Abouammo repeatedly accessed the
Twitter account of a prominent critic of the Saudi royal family
in early 2015. At one instance, he was able to view the email
address and telephone number associated with the account.
He also accessed the account of a second Saudi critic to get
personally identifiable information.
Twitter uncovered Alzabarah's unauthorized access of private
data and placed him on administrative leave in late 2015, but
not before he had tapped data from over 6,000 accounts,
including 33 for which Saudi authorities had submitted law
enforcement requests to Twitter, the complaint said.
"This information could have been used to identify and locate
the Twitter users who published these posts," the U.S. Justice
Department said in a news release.
Almutairi, for his part, is accused of acting as a go-between
for the Saudi government and the Twitter employees.
Abouammo, who is a U.S. citizen, was arrested in Seattle,
Washington while the other two are presumed to be in Saudi
Arabia, the department said. Abouammo was ordered to remain
behind bars pending a detention hearing Friday.
PAYMENT FOR INFORMATION
The two former Twitter employees were given cash and other
rewards, such as an expensive watch, in exchange for the
information they shared, the complaint said.
Abouammo later claimed the watch was worth $35,000 in
communications with prospective buyers on Craigslist.org.
They appeared to have been cultivated by a senior Saudi
official, identified by the Washington Post as Bader al-Asaker,
Prince Mohammad's close adviser who now heads the crown prince's
private office and charity MiSK.
Most contacts occurred in 2014 and 2015, when the crown prince
was rising to power, according to the U.S. complaint.
One man posted a photo of himself with the crown prince during
his visit to Washington in May 2015, while another flew to
Washington from San Francisco during the same time, the Justice
Department complaint says.
The Saudi embassy and government media office did not respond to
a request for comment. Reuters could not reach al-Asaker and he
did not reply to an emailed request for comment.
Twitter said it was grateful to the FBI and U.S. Justice
Department. "We recognize the lengths bad actors will go to try
and undermine our service," it said.
"Our company limits access to sensitive account information to a
limited group of trained and vetted employees. We understand the
incredible risks faced by many who use Twitter to share their
perspectives with the world and to hold those in power
accountable."
Twitter would not comment on how it became aware of the two
men's activities or whether it alerted law enforcement.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz and Katie Paul; additional reporting
by David Shepardson and Sylvia Westall in Dubai; Editing by
Sandra Maler, Chris Reese and Himani Sarkar)
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