Bader al-Asaker

Bader al-Asaker is a Saudi official who was secretary general of the MiSK Foundation, the charitable foundation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and who headed the crown prince's private office. The complaint in the Twitter Saudi espionage case refers to him as Foreign Official-1. The Ninth Circuit opinion names him as Bader Binasaker, and a 2020 lawsuit by Saad Aljabri names him as Bader Alasaker. He is not a defendant in the case.¹²

Position

The complaint describes Foreign Official-1 as the secretary general of a charitable organization founded by a member of the royal family, and states that by early 2015 he had become the head of that royal family member's private office. The complaint states that on the day of the June 2014 tour he emailed Abouammo about verifying the Twitter account of that royal family member, indicating that he worked for and at the direction of that member with respect to his online presence on the platform, and that from May 3, 2015 he listed the Royal Court as his employer. The superseding indictment gives the same description and dates the private office role to no later than May 2015.¹³ 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 Minister of Defense and Deputy Crown Prince.⁴

The Ninth Circuit opinion describes Binasaker as a close associate and "right-hand-man" of the crown prince. It states that he was appointed secretary general of MiSK in 2011, that he was general supervisor of the Prince Salman Youth Center, and that he used an email address with the official domain of the crown prince's private office. A government expert at trial, Dr. Kristin Diwan, testified that MiSK and the youth center were "very connected to royal power and trying to forward agendas of the particular royal or of the state."²

A profile in Arab News of May 28, 2018 describes Al-Asaker as secretary general of the MiSK Foundation and of the King Salman Youth Center, and as head of the private office of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with the rank of minister since his appointment by royal decree in July 2017. It lists a bachelor's degree from King Saud University, membership of the Council of Saudi Chambers and a role as deputy general director of a Riyadh electronic systems and air conditioning firm, Alasaker for Electronic Systems and AC, established in 1980, and states that more than one million users followed his personal Twitter account.⁵

Recruitment of Twitter employees

The complaint states that Ahmad Abouammo arranged a Twitter tour for Saudi visitors in June 2014, that the official attended, and that the two met in London in December 2014, where the official gave Abouammo a watch.¹³ The Ninth Circuit describes the same London meeting and the same watch, with Binasaker as the official, and states that the two discussed the @mujtahidd account there. Binasaker then sent Abouammo a dossier on the account in an email that referred to a "Mujtahid file."²

The Ninth Circuit describes Binasaker wiring $100,000 in February 2015 to a bank account in Lebanon opened under Abouammo's father's name, a further $100,000 in July 2015 and another $100,000 in January 2016. The complaint describes the payments as made by Foreign Official-1.¹²

According to the Ninth Circuit, Binasaker submitted an A-2 visa application for diplomatic travelers, describing himself as a "foreign official/employee," when he travelled with a Saudi delegation for meetings at Camp David.²

Alzabarah

The Ninth Circuit opinion states that Ali Alzabarah had repeatedly accessed the @mujtahidd account after meeting Binasaker in May 2015. The complaint describes Alzabarah's contact with Foreign Official-1 through Ahmed Almutairi, and the superseding indictment states that Foreign Official-1 contacted an employee of the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles to coordinate Alzabarah's departure from the United States in December 2015.¹²³

Aljabri lawsuit

Saad Aljabri's complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, filed August 6, 2020, describes Bader Alasaker as the head of the crown prince's private office and executive director of the MiSK Foundation, and alleges that he cultivated a network of covert agents whom he deployed to target critics of the crown prince.⁶ The court's opinion of September 30, 2022, in No. 1:20-cv-02146-TJK, summarizes the amended complaint's allegations about him. Aljabri alleged that Alasaker repeatedly called and messaged him in 2017 to coordinate a private jet for his return to Saudi Arabia; that Alasaker oversaw, with bin Salman, the "Tiger Squad" said to have been dispatched to Canada in October 2018; that he traveled to the United States about twice a year, sometimes for MiSK events; that the Twitter employees in the California case were acting on his instructions and he eventually hired one of them for MiSK; and that he and bin Salman used MiSK to recruit Saudi students in the United States as informants. The opinion records that he was named as a defendant, that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over him, and that Aljabri had not plausibly alleged that bin Salman and Alasaker used MiSK to recruit students as agents. It notes that Aljabri did not allege that Alasaker took part in, or witnessed, questioning of a family friend at a MiSK event in New York in September 2017 at which Alasaker was present.⁷

Reports of detention

Middle East Eye reported on June 9, 2020 that there were strong indications, from sources outside the kingdom, that Asaker had been arrested, after Saudi activists including Omar Abdulaziz noted that his social media accounts had fallen quiet; his Twitter account posted again on June 8, 2020. The same report states that Turkish media had reported that Maher Mutreb, who led the operatives who killed Jamal Khashoggi, called Asaker four times during the operation. The Saudi government did not comment.⁸