Former Twitter employee found guilty of spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia

A former employee of left-wing social media giant Twitter has been found guilty of using his position at the company to spy on the Saudi government.

Bloomberg reports that a former Twitter employee was recently convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia by providing the personal information of platform users who used anonymous accounts to criticize the country and its royal family.

Egyptian-born American Ahmed Abuammo was convicted by a jury on Tuesday on charges including spying for Saudi Arabia, money laundering, conspiracy to commit electronic fraud and falsifying documents. Abuammo’s trial lasted two weeks in San Francisco federal court and now faces 10 to 20 years in prison after his conviction.

Abuammo worked as a media partnerships manager at Twitter in 2015 and says he only did his job promoting the social media network in the Middle East and North Africa. Prosecutors argued that his relationship with Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, who is now Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, went beyond what his job required and helped the crown prince silence his critics. Breitbart News reported the incident when it went public in 2020.

The jury found evidence that Abuammo received a Hublot watch and a $300,000 bank transfer from the US MBS deputy Bader Al-Asaker, which he claimed was a bribe in exchange for information about Saudi personal accounts from dissidents.

By a court order, prosecutors in the case were barred from telling jurors that the United States and human rights organizations believed Saudi Arabia was secretly detaining and torturing critics of the country and its government.

But they pointed to the extreme measures through an expert witness who testified about Saudi Arabia’s changing politics and culture, and a woman who told jurors she remained silent in 2018 after her brother posted a satire critical of the country on Twitter.

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