San Francisco — Was he a cunning spy who traveled the world to meet handlers and founded a shell company to hide his money? Or was it a loyal Twitter employee who processed requests from VIP users and became a scapegoat when the government allowed true spies to slip through their fingertips?
These are the central questions of the trial that began Thursday for former Twitter employee Ahmad Abuammo, who was accused of spying on users on behalf of Saudi Arabia. In 2019, Abouammo was arrested and charged with committing wire fraud and acting on behalf of a foreign government without disclosing his work.
In an opening statement in a federal court in San Francisco, the Justice Department described Abu Ammo as Saudi Arabia’s agent who used his internal access to dig up dissident personal information on Twitter. He wanted closeness to money and power, the prosecutor said. However, Mr. Abuammo’s lawyer claimed that he called the user’s information as part of his normal duties and did not provide it to the Saudi authorities.
“Power. Greed. Lies. This will be a story told by evidence,” said Colin Sampson, Assistant United States Attorney.
According to the government, Mr. Abuammo maintained a close relationship with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s chief adviser, Bader Vinasakar. The prosecution exhibited photos of Abu Ammo and Vinasakar standing in front of a wooden carving of the Twitter logo during a tour of the San Francisco headquarters. The man also met in London, and Vinasakar presented Abu Ammo with a luxury watch.
“He wanted to recruit moles,” Sampson said of Vinasakar. After receiving the watch, Mr. Abuammo began looking for information about a pseudonym Twitter account that was critical of the Saudi government, Mr. Sampson said.
When he quit his job on Twitter in 2015, Abu Ammo associated Vinasakar with another employee, Ali Alzabara, according to prosecutors. He also contacted other Twitter employees to communicate the request from the Saudi authorities.
However, Abu Ammo’s lawyer claimed he had the right to see his account information as part of his work on Twitter and was unaware that Vinasakar was affiliated with the Saudi government.
His actions were “fully legal, perfectly appropriate, and most importantly part of Mr. Abuammo’s work,” said Jerome Matthews, a federal lawyer on behalf of Mr. Abuammo. I did.
According to Matthews, Twitter has instructed Abu Ammo to investigate complaints about the pseudonym Twitter account, a critic known as the Saudi government’s musicahid. He added that the government had no evidence that Mr. Abuammo had passed information about the account to Mr. Vinasakar.
“It makes a big difference to look at your account and give someone information about it,” Matthews said.
According to Matthews, his former colleague Alzabra fled the country while Abu Ammo was talking to law enforcement officials who asked him about his involvement with Vinasakar.
To explain the importance of Twitter to dissidents, the Justice Department has released testimony from Twitter executives.
Yoel Roth, responsible for Twitter’s security and integrity, said: “This is a remarkable use of our service by many people around the world.”
According to the Justice Ministry, during Abuammo’s tenure on Twitter in 2014 and 2015, about 6 million people in Saudi Arabia used social media services, accounting for about 4 percent of users worldwide.
The exam will last about two weeks.
