Saudi leader’s entourage includes official implicated in Twitter spy plot

A senior official in Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage, who is understood to be accompanying the crown prince on his first trip back to the US in over a decade, has previously been accused by US prosecutors of playing a central role in a conspiracy to infiltrate Twitter and identify users who were posting critically about the Saudi regime. Bader al-Asaker, who has headed Prince Mohammed’s private office since before he became crown prince, has never been formally charged by the US government for his role in the 2014-2015 scheme, but was named in court in 2022 by a US government lawyer as having led the campaign to find a “mole” who would be able to extract sensitive information from the social media company, which is now known as X. Related: A Saudi journalist tweeted against the government – and was executed for ‘high treason’ The infiltration ultimately led to the forced disappearance of at least one Saudi man – Abdulrahman al-Sadhan – who was later sentenced to 20 years in jail for using a satirical and anonymous Twitter account to mock the Riyadh government. The extraordinary campaign to send spies into the heart of a major US company was seen as a key example of how the Saudi state has been able to use a variety of methods to conduct transnational repression, silencing and intimidating critics of Prince Mohammed’s rule all over the world. Prince Mohammed has been recognised by the US legal system as having sovereign immunity protection since he was named prime minister of Saudi Arabia in 2022. The decision meant that legal cases against the crown prince, including a wrongful death civil case brought against him by the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was murdered by Saudi agents, were dismissed. A US intelligence assessment, which was published by the Biden administration in 2021, concluded that Prince Mohammed had ordered the hit. But even as Prince Mohammed returns to the US after more than a decade – without any fear of legal accountability – his chief of staff is entering the country having faced scrutiny by the Department of Justice. A superseding indictment states that Asaker met two of the men who were at the heart of the Twitter scheme and later charged with being illegal Saudi agents – Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Almutairi – while he and Prince Mohammed were on an official delegation to Washington in 2015. Ahmad Abouammo, a dual US-Lebanese national, was also charged and later arrested and convicted of acting as an unregistered agent of the Saudi government. Prosecutors alleged that Asaker promised Abouammo and Alzabarah gifts, cash, and future employment in exchange for non-public information about the Twitter users who were of interest to the Saudi government. Both men are on the FBI’s most-wanted list after they fled to Saudi before they could be arrested. Asaker was not charged by prosecutors but a superseding indictment filed in July 2020 states that the aide – who is identified 53 times in the document as “Foreign-Official-1” and was named during Abouammo’s trial – was at the heart of the conspiracy. The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. Asaker has also been named in a separate civil suit involving Saad al-Jabri, a former senior Saudi intelligence official who had close ties to western intelligence agencies and fled the kingdom in 2017. Jabri has accused Prince Mohammed of plotting to kill him, according to a US lawsuit, including a plot that was thwarted by Canadian officials in 2018. Canadian authorities have previously declined to comment on the specific claims, but have not denied the allegations. A US court is expected to conduct a hearing later this year in the long-running case, after a US appeals court ruling that allowed discovery to proceed in the civil case, in which both Asaker and another key aide to Prince Mohammed, Saud al-qahtani – who was separately subject to US sanctions for his role in the murder of Khashoggi – stand accused of “directing US residents in the US to locate and murder al-Jabri”. Al-Jabri’s lawyers said in a recent filing that neither Saudi defendants had cooperated with the discovery process. Asaker’s lawyers have denied the allegations in the civil case, saying in legal filings that Prince Mohammed’s chief of staff has complied with court orders, and have concluded that he had “no communications or meetings with US-based Saudis, did not issue any directives or instructions to them, and did not discuss with them Mr al-Jabri, a search for Mr al-Jabri, or any other topic”.