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Saudi Twitter spy case overview:
- Who: Federal prosecutors are asking for a seven-year prison sentence for former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo.
- Why: Abouamma was found guilty in August of acting as a spy for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia while working at Twitter between 2013 and 2015.
- Where: The case is in California federal court.
Federal prosecutors have requested a seven-year prison sentence for a former Twitter employee found guilty of acting as a spy on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government.
Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty in a California federal court in August of acting as a spy for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between 2013 and 2015 while working at Twitter.
Prosecutors argued Abouamma was given hundreds of thousands of dollars and a gold watch in return for agreeing to help Saudi Arabia conduct surveillance on its critics through the social media platform.
Abouamma knew he was “working as an agent” for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia when he “knowingly joined their scheme,” according to federal prosecutors.
Prosecutors claim Abouammo — who did report having any family issues that could have explained his conduct — repeatedly accessed information of critics while laundering bribes to himself through an offshore bank account in Lebanon.
Prosecutors argue convicted Twitter spy ‘did it for the money’
Abouamma, meanwhile, was receiving support from his family while also making a salary of $180,000 per year while working at Twitter — in addition to receiving stock options from the company — prosecutors claimed.
“In other words, he did it for the money,” prosecutors said.
Counsel for Abouamma has requested he be sentenced to probation, arguing his lack of criminal history and calling their client’s misconduct while working at Twitter “clearly aberrational.”
“Mr. Abouammo asks the Court to take into consideration his personal and familial circumstances, his relative role compared to others involved in the case, and his perfect compliance with pretrial supervision in the years that this case has been pending,” Abouammo’s counsel said.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, said their request for an 87-month prison sentence was actually on the low end of what Abouammo could receive, adding their apparent leniency accounted for his clean legal record and personal traits.
In an unrelated case, Twitter sought arbitration last month over class action claims it violated the law with the way it handled a mass layoff conducted after new owner Elon Musk finalized his purchase of the company in October.
Are you concerned that a Twitter employee was convicted of working as a spy for a foreign government? Let us know in the comments.
The Saudi Twitter spy case is United States of America v. Ahmad Abouammo, Case No. CR 19-621 EMC, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
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