A former Twitter employee pleaded guilty Tuesday to spying on the social network’s users on behalf of Saudi Arabia, trying to learn the identities of people critical of the regime and the royal family. A jury in San Francisco has ruled that Ahmad Abuamo did sell personal data on anonymous users to Riyadh for tens of thousands of dollars. He faces 10 to 20 years in prison for acting on behalf of a foreign government and for money laundering, fraud and forgery. He will be sentenced at a later date.
“The evidence showed that for money and when he thought he was doing it out of sight, the defendant sold his position (as a Twitter employee, editor’s note) to a relative;Colin Sampson, the federal prosecutor for the Saudi royal family, told jurors last week after a two-week trial. The ruling comes after human rights activists criticized Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron for their diplomatic policies toward Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been withdrawn from the international scene since the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate. : Many NGOs. regularly accuse the leader, nicknamed “MBSand its regime of spying, kidnapping and torturing dissidents, which Riyadh denies.
Received $100,000
Ahmad Abuamo was arrested in Seattle in November 2019. The prosecution accuses him, along with another former Twitter employee, Ali Alzabara, of being approached by Riyadh in late 2014-early 2015 to hand over accessible user data. internal only (email address, phone number, date of birth, etc.). Ahmad Abuamo left Twitter in 2015, Saudi Ali Alzabara left the United States.
Angela Chuang, Ahmad Abuammo’s lawyer, acknowledged that the Saudi operation may have been set up seven years ago to obtain information about opponents from Twitter employees. However, according to him, his client was tried instead of Ali Alzabara. “Clearly, the defendants the authorities were looking for are missing“, he said.
Twitter declined to comment on the verdict when asked by AFP. The platform accuses its former employee of not respecting the company’s rules by not telling his superiors that he received $100,000 and a Saudi watch worth more than $40,000 from a close friend of the company. it was “Money for daily pocket expensesFor Saudis accustomed to opulence, Angela Chuang told the jury:
Source: Le Figaro
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.