Ex-employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia
Ahmed Aboammo was found guilty of selling private information about anonymous users to Riyadh in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars.
Ahmed AbuAmmo quit Twitter in 2015
AFP
A former Twitter employee was found guilty Tuesday of spying on social network users on behalf of Saudi Arabia, seeking to learn the identities of people critical of the regime and royal family.
A jury in San Francisco has concluded that Ahmed Abu Ammo sold personal information about Anonymous users to Riyadh in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars. He faces 10 to 20 years in prison for acting on behalf of a foreign government, money laundering, fraud and falsifying documents. His sentence will be announced later. “The evidence shows that the defendant sold his position (Twitter employee, editor’s note) to a relative of the royal family, even though he thought he was doing it for money and out of sight,” Colin Sampson, Saudi Arabia’s federal prosecutor, told the jury last week after a two-week trial.
The ruling comes after human rights defenders criticized Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron for their diplomatic approach to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was ostracized from the international stage after the 2018 assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Turkey. The leader, nicknamed “MBS”, and his regime regularly accuse him of spying, abducting and torturing opponents, which Riyadh denies.
“Pocket money” promises his lawyer
Ahmed Abuammo was arrested in Seattle in November 2021. The lawsuit alleges that in late 2014-early 2015 Riyadh approached him and another former Twitter employee, Ali Alzabara, to send him data from users. Only accessible locally (email address, phone number, date of birth, etc.). Ahmed AbuAmmo left Twitter in 2015, but Ali Alzabara, a Saudi, left the US.
Angela Chuang, Ahmed Abuammo’s lawyer, acknowledged that the Saudi operation may have been set up seven years ago to obtain information about opponents from Twitter employees. But according to him, his client Mr. Tried to replace Alzabara. “It’s obvious the defendants the government is looking for aren’t there,” he said.
Twitter declined to comment on the ruling when asked by AFP. The platform alleges that the former employee violated company rules by not reporting to his line that he had received $100,000 from a close associate of the Saudi monarchy and a watch worth more than $40,000. Angela Chuang told jurors it was “pocket money” for Saudis accustomed to affluence.
AFP
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