Ex-Twitter employee accused of spying for Saudi Arabia pleads not guilty on 23 charges
A former Twitter employee charged with helping Saudi Arabia spy on its critics has pleaded not guilty to almost two dozen criminal counts filed against him.
Ahmad Abouammo pleaded not guilty to 23 criminal charges on Wednesday, including acting as an unregistered foreign agent and obstructing an investigation, the Courthouse News service reported.
Abouammo was arrested in November 2019 in Seattle and charged with spying, as well as destroying, altering, or falsifying records in a federal investigation, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. He had also plead not guilty at the time.
According to a complaint filed in a California federal court, Abouammo, a dual citizen of the US and Lebanon, accessed the data of two Twitter accounts whose users had been critical of the Saudi royal family and then provided those details to a Saudi official close to the royal family.
Abouammo was working as a media partnerships manager for Twitter's Middle East and North Africa region at the time, from November 2013 to May 2015.
In May 2014, Abouammo reportedly met with an unidentified Saudi official during a visit to Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco and started communicating with him through emails, phone calls and personal meetings, according to the indictment.
Seven months later, during a meeting in London, the Saudi official gave Abouammo a watch worth at least $20,000, according to federal prosecutors. Abouammo did not report the gift to his superiors, as required by Twitter policies at the time, according to court documents.
'We will delete evil my brother'
Prosecutors say that after Abouammo received the gift, he began using his inside access to obtain the email addresses and phone numbers of two vocal opponents of Saudi Arabia, including one called "Mujtahidd", an anonymous account once described as "the Saudi version of Wikileaks".
In February 2015, the same Saudi official deposited $100,000 in a recently opened bank account in Lebanon in the name of one of Abouammo's relatives. Abouammo had access to that account and later received wire transfers from it, prosecutors say.
Evidence shows that a month later Abouammo sent the official a private message through Twitter stating: "proactive and reactively we will delete evil my brother".
Abouammo resigned from Twitter in May 2015, but received at least $200,00[0] over the next eight months, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors say Abouammo lied to the FBI, saying the money was payment for a consulting gig, rather than a bribe.
Just before he left the company, he introduced Ali Alzabarah, who was working as a engineer for the company, to Ahmed Almutairi, whose social media company worked for an organisation founded by a member of the Saudi royal family and performed services for individual royals.
Following that meeting, the court documents say Alzabarah accessed the data of more than 6,000 Twitter users and continued to access the account of Mujtahidd, and shared those details with Almutairi and Saudi officials.
By the end of that year, Twitter managers had caught on, confronting Alzabarah about his unauthorised access of user accounts on 2 December 2015 and placing him on administrative leave - that's when Alzabarah left the US, headed to Saudi Arabia, and began working on a social media influence project there.
Arrest warrants have also been issued for Alzabarah and Almutairi, who are believed to still be in Saudi Arabia.
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