U.S. federal prosecutors have charged a Saudi man with lying to federal officials about using a fake Instagram account to harass Saudi critics — mostly women — living in the U.S. and Canada. That’s according to a complaint unsealed last month in federal court in Brooklyn.
A complaint unsealed last month in federal court in Brooklyn points to a wider investigation into online harassment campaigns targeting Saudi dissidents in the U.S. and their relatives — part of a trend of transnational repression that has alarmed American authorities in recent years as various autocratic governments seek to punish critics overseas.
The scenes drew scathing criticism from fellow Democrats and rights groups after Biden had vowed to treat the kingdom like a “pariah" and deemed Prince Mohammed responsible for Khashoggi’s killing. The kingdom's campaign to silence criticism has played out in America for some time. In 2019, U.S. prosecutors alleged Saudi Arabia recruited two Twitter employees to spy on thousands of accounts including those of American citizens and Saudi dissidents.
Prosecutors also said Alhussayen had taken screenshots of Khashoggi’s Twitter posts dating back a year before his death and kept photos of Khashoggi on his phone this year, revealing an obsession with Saudi dissidents. He allegedly threatened al-Mayouf with the fate of well-known Saudi women imprisoned in the kingdom, filling his texts with expletives.
“I do believe some of them are here, in the U.S.,” she said of online bullies who flood her and her American fiancé with death threats each day. “I’m afraid something might happen to me.”Calling Saudi Arabia a "great ally," President Donald Trump declined to stand behind the CIA's claim that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
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