The case, which illustrates the Saudi government’s intensity in pursuing information about its critics, is unfolding at a delicate point in diplomacy between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
While working at Twitter from 2013 to 2015, Ahmad Abouammo was responsible for helping celebrities, journalists and other notable figures in the Middle East promote their Twitter accounts. He handled requests for Twitter’s coveted blue verification badges and arranged tours of the San Francisco headquarters.
“We look forward to vindicating Mr. Abouammo and for him to have his day in court,” said Angela Chuang, a lawyer representing him. The government expects Abouammo’s legal team to argue that he worked lawfully as a consultant to Saudi Arabia, according to a court filing. Chuang declined to comment on legal strategy.
While Twitter has said it limited employee access to user data after Abouammo departed the company in 2015, it has continued to struggle with security problems. In 2020, hackers hijacked the accounts of famous users, including Musk, to promote a cryptocurrency scam. The men gathered “private user data, such as device identifiers, phone numbers, IP addresses, all of which could have been used by the Saudi government to identify and locate the individuals behind the accounts, including political dissidents,” the Justice Department said in a court filing.
One of the 6,000 Twitter accounts that Alzabarah is accused of looking at on behalf of Saudi officials in 2015 belonged to Omar Abdulaziz, a prominent Saudi dissident and confidant of Khashoggi, people familiar with the case said. Abdulaziz has sued Twitter over the breach; the case is in mediation, according to his lawyers and court records.
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