Twitter employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia

A former Twitter employee was convicted of failing to register as an agent for Saudi Arabia after accessing private data on users critical of the kingdom's government in a spy case spanning from Silicon Valley to the Middle East.

Ahmad Abouammo, a US citizen and former media partnership manager for Twitter's Middle East region, was charged in 2019 with acting as an agent of Saudi Arabia without registering with the US government.

A jury found him guilty of six counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

The jury acquitted him on five counts of wire fraud.

The case marked the first time that the kingdom, which has long been linked to the US through its massive oil reserves and regional security arrangements, has been accused of spying in America.

A 2019 FBI complaint alleges that Abouammo and Saudi citizen Ali Alzabarah, who worked as an engineer at Twitter, used their positions to access confidential Twitter data about users.

He used to identify a user's location, which included their email addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses.

A third man named in the complaint, Saudi citizen Ahmed Al-Mutairi, was alleged to have worked with the Saudi royal family as an intermediary.

The US complaint claimed that the user data of more than 6,000 Twitter accounts was accessed, including at least 33 usernames for which Saudi law enforcement officials had submitted emergency disclosure requests to Twitter.

Abouammo was arrested in November 2019 and released on bond. He had pleaded not guilty.

The FBI still lists Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Al-Mutairi as wanted. Abouammo's lawyers and Twitter didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.