DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – It started with a message that appeared on Danah al-Mayouf’s phone from an anonymous Instagram account – a promise to help her “crush” a $5 million lawsuit from a pro-government activist Saudi fashion model.
But, the mysterious texter said, she had to meet him in person.
It was December 2019, a year after the murder and mutilation of prominent US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and al-Mayouf feared he might be kidnapped and returned to the kingdom like others.
“I can’t meet anyone I don’t know,” al-Mayouf finally replied. “Especially with all the kidnappings and murders.”
Now she’s glad she didn’t go. US federal prosecutors have arrested the man behind the messages, 42-year-old Ibrahim Alhussayen, on charges of lying to federal officials about using the fake account to harass Saudi critics — mostly women — living in the US and Canada and to threaten.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on the allegations. A lawyer for Alhussayen did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did the Saudi embassy in Washington.
A complaint sealed in federal court in Brooklyn last month points to a wider investigation into online harassment campaigns targeting Saudi dissidents in the US and their relatives — part of a trend of transnational repression that has alarmed US authorities in recent years. as several autocratic governments try to punish critics abroad.
Earlier this year, for example, the Justice Department revealed a plot by agents acting on behalf of the Chinese government to stalk, harass and monitor dissidents in the US.
The complaint comes as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman continues to crush opposition, both in the kingdom and abroad, while he works to hone his image as a liberal reformer. The Saudi government has historically maintained that its critics are inciting, broadly defined, and threatening the security of the kingdom.
Nevertheless, President Joe Biden met — and shared a heartfelt punch with — Prince Mohammed at a diplomatic summit in Saudi Arabia last week.
The scenes drew scathing criticism from fellow Democrats and rights groups after Biden vowed to treat the kingdom as a “pariah” and found Prince Mohammed responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.
Speaking from Jeddah, Biden said he raised the “outrageous” murder of Khashoggi with Prince Mohammed and was “simple and direct” on human rights issues, without elaborating.
“If something like that happens again,” Biden said of the Saudi government’s efforts to target dissidents abroad, “they will get that response and much more.”
While some have accused Biden of making his pledge to put human rights at the heart of his foreign policy with his trip to the kingdom, Alhussayen’s arrest in New York underscores that federal officials are making increasing efforts to prevent those human rights abuses from happening on American soil.
The kingdom’s campaign to silence criticism has been going on in America for some time. In 2019, US prosecutors alleged that Saudi Arabia recruited two Twitter employees to spy on thousands of accounts, including those of US citizens and Saudi dissidents.
“This man is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, Gulf research director for Democracy for the Arab World Now, a human rights watchdog in Washington. Alaoudh claims he was also harassed by Alhussayen, although he is not named in the charges. “It’s a much bigger campaign by the Saudi government to reach people from outside.”
Alhussayen was a graduate student at two Mississippi universities. But online, the FBI says he was “@samar16490,” an account that relentlessly insulted and threatened young women on Instagram with the apparent purpose of helping the Saudi government.
Between January 2019 and August 2020, he is said to have been in regular contact with a Saudi government employee who reported to an official at the royal court.
Prosecutors also said Alhussayen took screenshots of Khashoggi’s Twitter posts dating back to a year before his death and kept photos of Khashoggi on his phone this year, demonstrating an obsession with Saudi dissidents.
Alhussayen was charged with lying to federal authorities during three interviews between June 2021 and January 2022. The FBI tells investigators that he has not used any social media accounts other than those in his own name.
Alhussayen’s victims regularly checked their phones to discover new waves of vicious attacks. As women critical of the Saudi government, they said Alhussayen’s warnings were part of a powerful campaign unleashed by legions of trolls on social media.
“MBS will wipe you off the face of the earth, you’ll see,” Alhussayen reportedly told al-Mayouf, the Saudi activist, referring to the crown prince by his initials.
He allegedly threatened al-Mayouf with the fate of well-known Saudi women imprisoned in the kingdom, filling his lyrics with expletives.
From New York, al-Mayouf hosts a popular YouTube show that delivers caustic take on Saudi-related current affairs and criticizes prominent officials.
For her and some of the other victims, there were signs that Alhussayen’s intentions went beyond causing offense.
After al-Mayouf declined his aid in the lawsuit and refused to meet, he lashed out. He tried to find out her location, the court said, “to personally supervise and further harass her”. The complaint has not been further elaborated.
“I do believe some of them are here in the US,” she said of online bullies who shower her and her US fiancé with death threats every day. “I’m afraid something will happen to me.”
She and her fiancé moved after pro-government accounts posted their home addresses on Twitter.
Moudi Aljohani, a prominent Saudi women’s rights activist who has sought asylum in the US, also believes Alhussayen was trying to gain her trust and lure her to a face-to-face meeting.
After speaking out on social media against the country’s male guardianship system, Aljohani fled the kingdom and her parents’ suffocating grip in 2016. She fears her family will kill her if she returns.
Aljohani said she was shocked when Alhussayen posted a cryptic photo of her close relative from his fake Instagram account in 2020.
But she, too, deserved his anger when she didn’t respond. Alhussayen allegedly told her he wanted to spit in her face. He said he hoped she would suffer the same fate as Nada al-Qahtani, a Saudi woman who was fatally shot by her brother in 2020 in a so-called “honour killing” in the kingdom.
Aljohani has refrained from publishing her critical views of the government in recent years because of what she described as a relentless smear campaign.
But a lower political profile has not helped. She and the others live in fear of the reach of their government.
“The Saudis pay a lot of money to restore their image and we are ruining the way they see it for them,” Aljohani said. “I feel like there’s no place that’s safe.”
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
