RIYADH (Middle East Eye) – A Saudi man used an anonymous Instagram account to threaten dissidents in the United States and Canada who were critical of the Saudi regime, according to recently unsealed court filings.
Ibrahim al-Hussayen was arrested for lying to FBI officials about using the account to intimidate Saudis - mainly women - living in North America, documents from a federal court in Brooklyn revealed.
The 42-year-old had been living in the U.S. since 2013 on a student visa, where he was obtaining a PhD from a Mississippi university when the threatening messages were sent.
On his U.S. visa application, Hussayen stated his occupation was “government” and his employer was the “Saudi royal court”.
One of the messages, sent in 2020, read, “soon, I will know where you are and get you, bi**h”.
He told another Saudi woman, who sought asylum in America because her family allegedly wanted to kill her, that he hoped to spit in her face.
Al-Hussayen posted a comment on the same woman’s Instagram account in February 2020 stating: “I hope you will have the same fate/end up as Nada al-Qahtani”.
Qahtani was fatally shot by her brother while travelling to university in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province in January 2020.
In another message, he warned a dissident that “MBS will wipe you off the face of the earth, you will see,” referring to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Since becoming the de facto leader of the kingdom in 2017, the crown prince has carried out a harsh crackdown on human rights activists and dissidents, much of which has been played out online.
According to prosecutors, al-Hussayen also took an apparent interest in slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, taking screenshots of his Twitter posts before his death and keeping images of him on his phone.
Washington Post journalist Khashoggi, who was murdered and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad at the kingdom’s Consulate in Istanbul in 2018, used to be a vocal critic of the Saudi crown prince.
The CIA has concluded that the murder had been ordered by the Saudi royal.
The new revelations come as President Joe Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia next month, in a bid to rebuild strained relations with the kingdom.