U.S. claims Saudis hired spies
Kingdom allegedly recruited two Twitter workers to spy on critics
SAN FRANCISCO — Saudi Arabia, frustrated by growing criticism of its leaders and policies on social media, recruited two Twitter employees to spy on thousands of accounts that included prominent opponents, prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
The complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco detailed a co-ordinated effort by Saudi government officials to recruit employees at the social media giant to look up the private data of Twitter accounts, including email addresses linked to the accounts and internet protocol addresses that can give up a user’s location.
It appeared to link Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful 34-year-son of King Salman, to the effort.
The accounts included those of a popular critic of the government with more than a million followers and a news personality. Neither was named.
The complaint also alleged that the employees — whose jobs did not require access to Twitter users’ private information — were rewarded with a designer watch and tens of thousands of dollars funnelled into secret bank accounts.
Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen, and Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, were charged with acting as agents of Saudi Arabia without registering with the U.S. government.
The Saudi government had no immediate comment through its embassy in Washington. Its state-run media did not immediately acknowledge the charges.
The complaint marks the first time that the kingdom, long linked to the U.S. through its massive oil reserves and regional security arrangements, has been accused of spying in America.
The allegations against two former Twitter employees and a third man who ran a social media marketing company that did work for the Saudi royal family comes a little more than a year after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. The Washington Post columnist and prominent critic of the Saudi government was slain and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Saudi Arabia, under King Salman and Prince Mohammed, has aggressively silenced and detained government critics even as it allows women to drive and opens movie theatres in the conservative kingdom. Prince Mohammed also has been implicated by U.S. officials and a United Nations investigative report in the assassination of Khashoggi. The prince has said he bears ultimate responsibility for what happens in the kingdom’s name, though he denies orchestrating the slaying.
The criminal allegations reveal the extent to which the Saudi government went to control the flow of information on Twitter, said Adam Coogle, a Middle East researcher with Human Rights Watch.
The platform is the main place for Saudis to express their views, and about a third of the nation’s 30 million people are active users. But the freewheeling nature of Twitter is a major source of concern for its authoritarian government, Coogle said.
The kingdom has used different tactics to control speech and keep reformers and others from organizing, including employing troll armies to harass and intimidate users online. It has even arrested and imprisoned Twitter users.
The crown prince’s former top adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, who also served as director of the cybersecurity federation, started the “Black List” hashtag to target critics of the government. He ominously tweeted in 2017 that the government had ways of unmasking anonymous Twitter users.