Last November, the US Department of Justice accused two former Twitter employees of spying for Saudi Arabia on the accounts of critics of its policies.
The American citizen Ahmed Abu Amo was arrested, the first accused, and the second accused is a Saudi citizen named Ali Al-Zubara, and he was accused of accessing the personal information of more than 6 thousand Twitter accounts since 2015, and exchanging information with Saudi officials.
The Ministry of Justice said at the time that the two defendants worked together for the Saudi government and the ruling family, in order to expose the identities of the owners of opposition accounts on Twitter, and to exchange information with Saudi officials.
After Saudi security activist Ali Al-Ahmad - who lives in northern Virginia, which is adjacent to the capital, Washington - confirmed that American security sources included his name on the list of those who were spied on; He sued Twitter company in a New York City federal court.
Al-Ahmad accused the company of violating the stored communications law by intentionally accessing his private stored messages without permission.
Hacking the Twitter account before freezing it and
in a private interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Ahmad confirmed that the company "Twitter violated its privacy and the privacy of his account files in Arabic (he has another account in English), in addition to freezing it and allowing access to the contents of the account including 36 thousand followers, and sent their secret information And their direct messages to Saudi Arabia.
And the lawsuit, which Al-Jazeera Net viewed, held Twitter responsible for the arrest and torture of many Saudi activists who were in contact with Al-Ahmad, through his account on the Twitter platform.
Al-Ahmed indicated that since his freezing of his Arabic account on Twitter in May 2018, he has been trying to restart the account, but all his efforts have been unsuccessful.
He stated that "the Arab account on the Twitter platform was suspended several times, before it was permanently frozen without the ability to recover its private correspondence and sensitive files."
"I had 36,000 followers, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, and many of them entered with symbolic names for fear of the oppression of the authorities. I did not know who these people were, and of course many of them were agents of the regime in Saudi Arabia," the Saudi activist said.
He added that Saud Al-Qahtani, adviser to the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was among those who were following my account, and there were several dialogues between us.
Al-Ahmad confirmed that the suspension of his account came without any warning or warning, as is the usual practice, and this is evidence of the account being compromised before it was frozen.
For his part, Ahmad's lawyer in this case accused Twitter of being part of efforts to silence Ahmad and his followers for criticizing them openly in Saudi Arabia, as a result of violating the policy of providing information illegally to a foreign government.
According to the 16-page lawsuit, it "enabled Saudi spies to enter the company and gain unrestricted access to Twitter resources."
Victims have disappeared, tortured,
and Al-Ahmad is demanding material compensation for the damage he has suffered. He wondered, how can those who were arrested or disappeared be compensated for communicating with me through this account?
He said that the most prominent victim was Abdullah al-Hamid, who died in his detention last month. Also, Abd al-Rahman al-Sadhan, a well-known Saudi activist, had disappeared for two years, and Mr. Abd al-Karim al-Khader was in detention.
During his conversation with Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Ahmad stressed that Twitter had hidden very important information, including reports and research on activists in the UAE, and on coordination efforts between Saudi activists and reformers from inside and outside the Kingdom.
It is worth noting that Twitter received significant financial investments from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, starting in 2011 when Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bought $ 300 million worth of Twitter shares.
A previous meeting between Twitter CEO Jacques Dorsey and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also gathered, after the Ministry of Justice accused its employees Monday of spying for Saudi Arabia, which raised questions about whether Dorsey was aware of the Saudi espionage campaign inside his company.