Two former Twitter employees are facing charges pressed by federal prosecutors of spying for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The two, Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi national, and Ahmad Abouammo, a US citizen, leveraged on their access to Twitter to gather sensitive, non-public information on behalf of the kingdom.
Charges against the spies were unsealed in a San Fransisco court and lay bare the efforts by the Saudi administration to control criticism abroad.
"The criminal complaint unsealed today alleges that Saudi agents mined Twitter's internal systems for personal information about known Saudi critics and thousands of other Twitter users, US Attorney David Anderson said in a statement seen by American media outlets.
"U.S. law protects U.S. companies from such an unlawful foreign intrusion. We will not allow U.S. companies or U.S. technology to become tools of foreign repression in violation of U.S. law, " he added.
Ahmed Almutairi, a third man named in the case, is said to have acted as the intermediary between the Saudi authorities and the social media giant employees.
No Saudi government official has been named in the case.
The case comes just months after Jamal Khashogjji, a critic of the Saudi ruling family, was brutally murdered in the kingdom's consulate in Turkey.
Saudi Arabia has long denied that Prince Mohamed Bin Salman issued the order to kill the Washington Post columnist.