Twitter Saudi espionage case

The Twitter Saudi espionage case is the federal prosecution in the Northern District of California of two former Twitter employees, Ahmad Abouammo and Ali Alzabarah, and a Saudi intermediary, Ahmed Almutairi, for acting as agents of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia without notice to the Attorney General. Prosecutors alleged that the two employees used their access to nonpublic account data to give Saudi officials information about Twitter users who criticized the Saudi government. Abouammo was convicted on six counts in August 2022, sentenced to 42 months in prison, and resentenced to time served in June 2025 after the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the first sentence.¹²³

Charges

A criminal complaint naming Abouammo, Alzabarah and Almutairi was filed on November 5, 2019, with an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Letitia Wu.⁴ The Justice Department announced the charges on November 7, 2019: Abouammo had been arrested in Seattle on November 5, and Alzabarah and Almutairi, who was also known as Ahmed Aljbreen, were believed to be in Saudi Arabia, with federal warrants issued for their arrest. The release gave the maximum penalty for acting as an agent of a foreign government without notification as 10 years and for falsifying records as 20 years.⁵ The indictment of November 19, 2019 charged all three with acting as agents of the government of Saudi Arabia, and charged Abouammo with obstruction for providing false documents to the FBI about his payments from a Saudi official.¹ A superseding indictment filed on July 28, 2020 added counts for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud, wire fraud, money laundering under 18 U.S.C. 1956, and falsification of records under 18 U.S.C. 1519.⁶

Insider access

Abouammo worked at Twitter from November 2013 to May 2015 as a media partnerships manager. The complaint says that he accessed the private data of Twitter users through Twitter's internal systems, including email addresses, telephone numbers and IP addresses, for purposes it describes as having no legitimate business use.⁴ The Ninth Circuit names the internal tool as "Profile Viewer." Abouammo moved to Seattle in May 2015 and started a freelance social media consultancy, through which he introduced Saudi contacts to Twitter employees and acted as an intermediary on verification requests.²

Alzabarah was a site reliability engineer at Twitter in San Francisco from August 2013 to December 2015. The complaint states that he entered the United States in 2005, that he resided in San Bruno, California, from at least 2014 until December 3, 2015, and that he was funded by a Saudi Arabian scholarship.⁴ Between May 21 and November 18, 2015, the complaint alleges, Alzabarah accessed the data of more than 6,000 Twitter users, including at least 33 usernames for which Saudi law enforcement had submitted emergency disclosure requests to Twitter.⁴ The Justice Department release of November 7, 2019 placed the recruitment between November 2014 and May 2015 and stated that Almutairi arranged meetings and acted as a go-between.⁵

Recruitment and the official

Almutairi, a Saudi citizen, controlled a Saudi social media marketing company from at least May 2014 to at least March 2016 that performed work for the charity known as Organization-1 and for members of the royal family.⁶ The complaint describes him as an intermediary between Alzabarah and the official it calls Foreign Official-1.⁴ In November 2014 he met Abouammo in front of the Twitter office in San Francisco and described himself as the adviser to a senior member of the Saudi royal family.⁴ In February 2015 he telephoned Alzabarah, had dinner with him, and posted a photograph of the two on his own account with a comment that Alzabarah was the only Saudi Arabian who worked at Twitter.⁴

The complaint describes Foreign Official-1 as the secretary general of a charitable organization founded by a member of the royal family, and says that he became the head of that royal family member's private office in early 2015.⁴⁶ The Justice Department's sentencing release describes the official as the head of the "private office" of a royal family member who was a Minister of State and then became Minister of Defense and Deputy Crown Prince.⁷ The Ninth Circuit's opinion names the official as Bader Binasaker, describes him as a close associate and "right-hand-man" of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and states that he was appointed secretary general of the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation, known as MiSK, in 2011.² A 2020 lawsuit by a former Saudi intelligence official names Bader Alasaker as the head of the crown prince's private office and the executive director of the MiSK Foundation.⁸⁹ The Ninth Circuit spells the name Binasaker, the lawsuit spells it Alasaker, and press reports use al-Asaker.

In June 2014 a group of Saudi visitors toured the Twitter office in San Francisco after a request from a US-Saudi trade organization in Washington. The official attended, and the complaint states that he later became the head of the private office of the royal family member.⁶ The Ninth Circuit describes Binasaker meeting Abouammo during that visit, and describes an email from Binasaker afterward asking Abouammo to verify the crown prince's Twitter account.² In December 2014 the two met in London, where, according to the complaint, the official gave Abouammo a Hublot watch.⁴⁶

Accounts accessed

The Ninth Circuit opinion states that Binasaker and Abouammo discussed a widely followed account with the handle @mujtahidd during the London meeting. The opinion describes the account as an "infamous and colorful" persona that posted about alleged corruption and incompetence in the kingdom and the royal family. Binasaker later sent Abouammo a dossier on the account, in an email referring to a "Mujtahid file," and Abouammo accessed the email and phone information associated with @mujtahidd on various occasions. In February 2015 Binasaker emailed Abouammo about @HSANATT, an account that had been suspended for impersonating a Saudi government official.²

The complaint describes its principal target, Twitter User-1, as a prominent critic of the Saudi government and royal family with more than 1,000,000 followers, and describes Twitter User-9 as a well-known critic with asylum in Canada whose account Alzabarah viewed on June 19 and July 5, 2015.⁴ NPR reported on November 6, 2019, quoting the Washington Post, that one of the accounts Alzabarah accessed belonged to Omar Abdulaziz, a dissident who later became close to Jamal Khashoggi.¹⁰ Abdulaziz, then a student in Montreal, told the Washington Post that he had received a message from Twitter that a "state sponsored" actor had penetrated his account. His lawyer, Mark Kleiman, said that "there's a direct trail of blood drops from this hack to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi."¹¹

The Ninth Circuit's memorandum in Abdulaziz's own suit against Twitter describes his allegation that two Saudi operatives who worked for Twitter accessed his accounts without authorization and passed his personal information to the kingdom, and records that Twitter sent "safety" notices on December 11, 2015 to account holders whose accounts appeared to have been accessed without authorization.¹²

Payments

According to the complaint, the official sent Abouammo's close relative in Beirut a $100,000 wire in February 2015. Two transfers of roughly $10,000 each followed from a Bank Audi account in Beirut to Abouammo's Bank of America account in February and March 2015.⁴ On July 9, 2015 a $100,000 wire went from the National Commercial Bank in Saudi Arabia to the Bank Audi account, and on January 25, 2016 a further $100,000 went from the same bank to an account Abouammo had opened at Chase Bank.⁴ The Ninth Circuit describes the February 2015 account as opened under Abouammo's father's name and the July 2015 transfer as sent to the father's Lebanese account with a note apologizing for the delay.² The Supreme Court's opinion states that the official wired Abouammo a total of $300,000.¹³

The complaint states that the official gave Abouammo a Hublot Unico Big Bang King Gold Ceramic watch in London. A consignment store offered to sell the watch for $20,000. In January 2015 Abouammo answered online advertisements for luxury watches, describing his watch as worth $35,000 and offering it for no less than $25,000.⁴ He later told the FBI that the watch was worth $500 and that he had received $100,000, while the complaint states that he had received at least $300,000.⁴ The superseding indictment describes the watch as worth at least $20,000.⁶ The Ninth Circuit and the Justice Department give the Craigslist asking price as $42,000.²¹⁴

Alzabarah's departure

On December 2, 2015, after Twitter confronted Alzabarah about his access to user accounts and placed him on administrative leave, he attempted to contact Almutairi and then contacted the official. The official in turn contacted an employee of the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles to coordinate Alzabarah's departure from the United States. Alzabarah flew to Saudi Arabia on December 3, 2015, sent his resignation to Twitter by email, and by January 2016 had a job in Saudi Arabia with Organization-1.⁶ The Ninth Circuit states that Alzabarah and his family fled to Saudi Arabia after Twitter questioned him, and that he found employment with MiSK there.²

The Ninth Circuit describes an article published by The New York Times on October 20, 2018, which reported that Twitter had been warned in late 2015 that Saudi operatives had groomed Alzabarah to look up the identifying information of critical accounts. On the day of publication, FBI agents flew from the Bay Area to Abouammo's home in Seattle. During an interview that lasted several hours, Abouammo told the agents that Binasaker worked for MiSK and for the Prince Salman Youth Center, both of which he said were owned or controlled by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that the watch was "plasticky and cheap and worth approximately $500," and that he had been paid $100,000 for services after leaving Twitter. He emailed the agents two invoices, the second of which, according to its metadata, was created while he was upstairs retrieving it.²

Verdict and sentence

A jury in San Francisco returned its verdict on August 9, 2022 after a two-week trial before Judge Edward M. Chen. The judgment lists convictions on Count One (acting as an agent of a foreign government, 18 U.S.C. 951), Count Four (conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud), Count Eleven (wire fraud and honest services wire fraud), Counts Twenty and Twenty-One (international money laundering) and Count Twenty-Three (falsification of records, 18 U.S.C. 1519).³ The jury acquitted him on five counts of wire fraud, and nine further counts were dismissed without prejudice.¹ The Justice Department's release of August 10, 2022 quoted Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen describing the case in terms of "transnational repression."¹⁴

Judge Chen sentenced Abouammo in December 2022 to 42 months in prison on each count, to run concurrently, with three years of supervised release and forfeiture of $242,000. The advisory Guidelines range was 70 to 87 months, and the sentence was below that range. The Justice Department's release stated that the court emphasized that Abouammo shared the information with a government known for not tolerating dissidents and that a more culpable co-defendant had fled the country.²⁷

Appeal, resentencing and Supreme Court review

On December 4, 2024 the Ninth Circuit affirmed the convictions, vacated the sentence in an accompanying memorandum and remanded for resentencing. Judge Daniel Bress wrote the opinion and Judge Kenneth Lee concurred. The panel held that the conviction under 18 U.S.C. 951 could rest on the theory that Abouammo acted at the behest of a foreign government, without resolving whether Binasaker was a foreign official, and that venue for the falsification count was proper in the Northern District because FBI agents in San Francisco received the document. Judge Lee wrote separately that the decision did not give the government free rein to manufacture venue.² The court denied rehearing en banc on March 18, 2025 and issued its mandate on March 26, 2025.³

Judge Chen held the resentencing on June 26, 2025. The minute entry records a criminal history category of 1, an adjusted offense level of 20 and a Guidelines range of 33 to 41 months, and a sentence of time served on each of the six counts, to run concurrently, with two years of supervised release, a $600 special assessment and no fine. The government and the probation office had recommended three years of supervised release, and the court indicated that after one year Abouammo could ask for early termination if he complied with all conditions. The amended judgment of July 2, 2025 retains forfeiture of $242,000.³

Abouammo petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari on July 16, 2025. On December 5, 2025 the Court granted the petition limited to the first question presented, and heard argument on March 30, 2026.¹⁵ On June 11, 2026 the Court reversed and remanded in a unanimous opinion by Justice Kagan, reported at 608 U.S. 597. It held that a defendant charged under 18 U.S.C. 1519 must be tried in the district where the falsification occurred, which here was Seattle and, in venue terms, the Western District of Washington, and that the trial should not have occurred in the Northern District of California.¹³ The district docket records Ninth Circuit orders on July 13 and July 20, 2026, status reports on June 30 and August 18, 2026, and a stipulation and proposed order on September 2, 2026.¹⁶

Civil suits

On August 6, 2020, Saad Aljabri, a former Saudi intelligence official, filed a 106-page complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Mohammed bin Salman. The complaint alleges that the crown prince sent a hit squad, known as the Tiger Squad, to Canada to kill him, 13 days after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. It also alleges that Alasaker cultivated a network of covert agents whom he deployed to target critics of the crown prince.⁹

The court's opinion of September 30, 2022 in Aljabri v. bin Salman, No. 1:20-cv-02146-TJK, summarizes the amended complaint. Aljabri alleged that bin Salman, Alasaker and MiSK were tied to Saudi espionage in the United States, citing the Twitter indictment; that the Twitter employees were acting on Alasaker's instructions and that Alasaker eventually hired one of them to work for MiSK; and that in 2015 bin Salman told Aljabri that he had someone "in Twitter." The opinion records the allegations that the Tiger Squad was overseen by bin Salman and Alasaker, and that Alasaker repeatedly called and messaged Aljabri to coordinate a private jet for his return to Saudi Arabia. Judge Timothy Kelly dismissed the claims against bin Salman, Alasaker and the other served defendants for lack of personal jurisdiction, and held that Aljabri had not plausibly alleged that bin Salman and Alasaker used MiSK to recruit Saudi students as agents. The opinion notes that the Twitter employees were not alleged to be involved in that case.⁸

Abdulaziz sued Twitter over the access to his accounts. On November 6, 2024 a divided Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the dismissal of his negligence claims. It found that he had standing to sue, but held that the claims were barred by California's two-year statute of limitations, with Judge Collins dissenting.¹² A suit captioned Al-Ahmed v. Twitter, Inc. was filed in the Northern District of California on October 13, 2021 (No. 3:21-cv-08017).¹⁷