Former Twitter employee on trial for spying for Saudi Arabia

A jury in California must judge the fate of a former employee of Twitter, accused by the justice of the United States of having extracted personal data from the platform for the benefit of Saudi Arabia, who sought to know the identity of critics of the regime. Ahmad Abouammo is accused of having sold sensitive data to the Saudi kingdom, in particular detailed information concerning certain anonymous accounts.

The defense, before the jury retired to deliberate, countered that he was just doing his job, simply accepting a few gifts.

“The evidence has shown that, for money and when he thought he was doing it out of sight, the defendant sold his place to a relative [de la famille royale saoudienne] »declared, in front of the jury, the prosecution, by the voice of the federal prosecutor Colin Sampson.

Ahmad Abouammo was arrested in Seattle (Washington State) in November 2021, suspected of working illegally for a foreign government. He and another Twitter employee, Ali Alzabarah, are accused of having been approached by Riyadh between the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015 in order to transmit user data accessible only internally (e-mail addresses, phone numbers telephone, dates of birth…) which could allow Saudi Arabia to identify critics so far anonymous on the social network.

$100,000 and $40,000 watch received

If Mr. Abouammo left Twitter in 2015, Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi, has, for his part, left the United States. For Angela Chuang, Ahmad Abouammo’s lawyer, the latter is tried instead of Mr. Alzabarah. ” And it’s [la] mistake [de la justice américaine, qui] let Mr. Alzabarah flee the country, while under FBI surveillance [la police fédérale] ! »she launched.

While she acknowledges that a Saudi operation could have been set up seven years ago to obtain information on opponents from Twitter employees, the lawyer assures that the prosecution has not proved that his client was one of them. “It is obvious that the defendants the government was looking for are not there”, said Angela Chuang. She mocked the procedure, which ends like a “human resources investigation disguised as a federal trial”.

His client is, in fact, accused by Twitter of not having respected the rules of the company by not declaring to his superiors to have received 100,000 dollars (98,000 euros) and a watch worth more than 40 000 dollars from someone close to the Saudi monarchy. It was ” pocket money “for Saudis accustomed to opulence, Angela Chuang told jurors.