RIYADH (Dispatches) – A
humanitarian aid worker who used an anonymous Twitter account to criticize Saudi Arabia has filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against the social media platform, the kingdom, and its crown prince and prime minister, Mohammed bin Salman.
Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, a Red Crescent worker in Riyadh, was arrested without a warrant or charge in the kingdom in 2018 and sentenced to 20 years in prison along with receiving a two-decade travel ban.
His detention was believed to be linked to an anonymous Twitter account he ran, from which he commented on human rights and social justice issues in Saudi Arabia.
The case stirred questions about how Saudi Arabia obtained information on the person behind the social media account.
In 2019, U.S. prosecutors accused Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen and former media partnership manager for Twitter’s Middle East region, and former Twitter employee, Ali Alzabarah, of being enlisted by Saudi officials between 2014 and 2015 to obtain private information on Twitter accounts critical of Riyadh.
In August 2022 Abouammo was convicted by a U.S. court of acting as an agent for Saudi Arabia, money laundering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and falsifying records.
Alzabarah fled the U.S. in December 2015 after Twitter management confronted him. He escaped FBI surveillance and boarded a flight with his wife and child to Saudi Arabia where he took a job at the Misk Foundation, a charitable organization established by Mohammed bin Salman. Alzabarah is wanted on a charge of failing to register in the U.S. as an agent of a foreign government as required by U.S. law.
Ahmed Almutairi, a third Saudi national, was also charged with acting as an unauthorized agent of a foreign government for working as an intermediary between a Saudi official and Alzabarah and Abouammo.
On Tuesday Abdulrahman and his sister, Areej, a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen, filed the lawsuit alleging that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia used its commercial relationship with Twitter to crush dissent and forcibly disappear government critics.
The case also alleges that Twitter enabled its co-conspirators to commit acts of transnational repression, and even “permitted the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to enjoy an equity stake in Twitter itself”.
“Areej and Abdulrahman have endured immense harm at the direction of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which continues to hold Abdulrahman hostage, lording its control to keep both him and his sister quiet,” a statement released by the plaintiff’s lawyers and viewed by Middle East Eye said.
According to her lawyers, Areej was harassed and stalked in an attempt to silence her after she spoke out about her brother’s arrest.
The plaintiffs allege that the “criminal enterprise” accessed and transmitted confidential Twitter user data more than 30,000 times, citing evidence introduced by federal prosecutors at Abouammo’s trial.
The lawsuit also names Mohammed bin Salman as an alleged co-conspirator.