{"id":11506,"date":"2019-11-07T10:02:31","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T05:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/?p=11506"},"modified":"2019-11-07T10:02:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T05:02:31","slug":"ex-twitter-employees-accused-of-spying-for-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/archives\/11506","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Twitter Employees Accused of Spying for Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged two former employees of the social media network Twitter with spying on users for Saudi Arabia\u2019s government,.<\/p>\n

The charges, unsealed on Wednesday in San Francisco, allege that Saudi agents sought personal information about Twitter users including known critics of the Saudi government.<\/p>\n

Court documents\u00a0 named the two as Ahmad Abouammo, a US citizen, and Ali Alzabarah, from Saudi Arabia.\u00a0 A third person, Saudi citizen Ahmed Almutairi, is also accused of spying.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say the three men were working in coordination with a Saudi official who leads a charitable organization belonging to Saudi Arabia\u2019s powerful crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman.<\/p>\n

All three men are charged with acting as illegal agents of a foreign government. Abouammo, the only one currently in US custody after his arrest in Seattle Tuesday, is also charged with attempting to obstruct the FBI’s investigation by providing agents with a fake invoice.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Alzabarah and Almutairi are believed to be in Saudi Arabia and federal warrants have been issued for their arrests, the Justice Department said.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Mr Alzabarah, a former Twitter engineer, is accused of accessing the personal data of more than 6,000 Twitter users in 2015 after being recruited by Saudi agents.<\/p>\n

He was confronted by his supervisors and placed on administrative leave before fleeing to Saudi Arabia with his wife and daughter, investigators said.<\/p>\n

Tensions between Riyadh and Washington have run high since October 2018, when a Saudi hit squad killed and dismembered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident, Washington Post columnist and critic of MBS, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump has since defended maintaining ties with Riyadh, but the CIA reportedly concluded that MBS ordered the Khashoggi hit and U.S. lawmakers have urged the administration to distance itself from the kingdom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged two former employees of the social media network Twitter with spying on users for Saudi Arabia\u2019s government,. The charges, unsealed on Wednesday in San Francisco, allege that Saudi agents sought personal information about Twitter users including known critics of the Saudi government. Court documents\u00a0 named the two as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1460,31,1378],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","category-news","category-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11506"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11509,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11506\/revisions\/11509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}