Senior aide to Mohammed bin Salman allegedly led campaign to identify users who were posting critically about Saudi regime
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.
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.
