FBI accuses Twitter pair of spying on Saudi dissidents

THE US has charged two former Twitter employees with spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by using their positions in the social media company to track Saudi dissidents.

The FBI alleges Ahmad Abouammo, a US citizen, and Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi, were recruited by a Saudi official working for the prince to gather information about online critics of the kingdom.

It is the first time Washington has publicly accused Saudi Arabia of spying inside the United States and comes as the kingdom struggles to weather the storm over the murder of Washington

Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Prosecutors say the spying scheme was run by Bader al-asaker, who heads one of Prince Mohammed’s charities. Court papers allege he was “working for and at the direction of ” the prince, referred to as “Royal Family Member 1”. Mr al-asaker met Abouammo in 2014, while the younger man was working at Twitter. Mr al-asaker allegedly paid him at least $300,000 (£234,000) and, during a meeting in London, gave him a Hublot watch worth $20,000.

Days after the London meeting, Abouammo allegedly tried to access the private data of a Twitter account called @Mujtahidd, which had more than a million followers and regularly tweeted criticisms of the Saudi royal family.

Alzabarah was allegedly recruited in May 2015 in Washington and, within a week of returning to Twitter’s San Francisco base, he allegedly searched the Twitter data of 6,000 users.

Twitter managers caught him accessing private data in December 2015 and confronted him, according to the FBI. He flew to Saudi Arabia the next day and later took up a job at the prince’s charity.

Abouammo was arrested this week after FBI agents became suspicious he was forging invoices to hide large sums of money he was being paid by Saudi Arabia. The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.