Former Twitter employee sentenced to more than three years in prison in Saudi spy case

A previous Twitter supervisor founded guilty of spying for Saudi Arabia was sentenced on Wednesday to more than 3 years in jail.

Ahmad Abouammo, a double US-Lebanese person, was founded guilty previously this year of 6 criminal counts, consisting of serving as a representative for Saudi Arabia and attempting to camouflage a payment from a main connected to the nation’s royal household.

United States District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco sentenced Abouammo to 42 months in federal jail and purchased him to pay $242,000 to cover the expense of kickbacks he got for his work, the DOJ stated in a declaration. Abouammo will start his jail sentence in March.

CNN has actually connected to a lawyer for Abouammo for remark.

Throughout his sentencing, Chen stated that “exposing dissident details is a major offense,” and called Abouammo’s actions “major” and “substantial,” according to the DOJ.

” This sentence sends out a message to experts with access to user details to secure it, especially from repressive routines, or run the risk of considerable time in jail,” United States Lawyer Stephanie Hinds stated in a declaration.

Abouammo, who at Twitter assisted supervise relationships with reporters and celebs in the Middle East and North Africa, was condemned in August after a 2-1/2 week trial in San Francisco federal court.

District attorneys stated Bader Al-Asaker, a close consultant to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hired Abouammo to utilize his expert understanding to gain access to Twitter accounts and collect individual details about Saudi dissidents.

Those accounts supposedly consisted of @mujtahidd, a pseudonym for a political agitator who acquired countless Twitter fans in the Arab Spring uprisings by implicating the Saudi royal household of corruption and other misbehaviours.

District attorneys stated Abouammo got a minimum of $300,000 and a $20,000 high-end watch from Al-Asaker, and hid the cash by transferring it in a relative’s account in Lebanon and having it wired to his own account in the United States.

Abouammo’s legal representatives had actually argued that the work Abouammo did at Twitter was merely part of his task.

Abouammo was likewise founded guilty of wire scams and sincere services scams, cash laundering and a conspiracy charge. Jurors acquitted him on 5 of the 11 counts he dealt with.