US Business

A former Twitter worker was found guilty on Tuesday of spying for Saudi officials keen to unmask critics on the platform.

Ahmad Abouammo was pronounced guilty on criminal counts including money laundering, fraud, and being an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to a copy of the verdict.

Prosecutors in federal court in San Francisco told jurors that Abouammo sold Twitter user information for cash and an expensive watch some seven years ago.

His defense team contended that he did nothing more than accept gifts from free-spending Saudis for simply doing his client management job.

“The evidence shows that, for a price and thinking no one was watching, the defendant sold his position to an insider of the crown prince,” US prosecutor Colin Sampson said in final remarks to the jury.

Defense attorney Angela Chuang countered that while there certainly appeared to be a conspiracy to get revealing information about Saudi critics from Twitter, prosecutors failed to prove Abouammo was part of it.

Abouammo quit Twitter in 2015 and took a job at e-commerce titan Amazon in Seattle, where he lives, according to court documents.

Jurors deliberated for three days before finding Abouammo guilty on 6 of the 11 charges against him.

Chuang conceded to the jury that Abouammo did violate Twitter employee rules by not telling the San Francisco-based company that he had received $100,000 in cash and a watch valued at more than $40,000 from someone close to the Saudi crown prince.

However, she downplayed the significance of the gift, saying it amounted to “pocket change” in Saudi culture known for generosity and lavish presents.

– Trust traded for cash? –

Abouammo was arrested in Seattle in November of 2019.

Prosecutors accused Abouammo and fellow Twitter employee Ali Alzabarah of being enlisted by Saudi officials between late 2014 and early the following year to get private information on accounts firing off posts critical of the regime.

The then-Twitter workers could use their credentials to glean email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and other private data to identify people behind anonymous accounts, prosecutors said.

Abouammo remained free on Tuesday pending sentencing, despite concerns expressed by prosecutors that he might try to flee the country.

Alzabarah, a Saudi national, is being sought on a charge of failing to register in the United States as an agent of a foreign government as required by United States law, according to an FBI statement.

Chuang contended in court that prosecutors were trying to punish Abouammo for Alzabarah’s actions.

“As much as the government wishes that was Mr Alzabarah sitting at the table right now, it is not,” Chuang told jurors.

“And that is on them, they let Mr Alzabarah flee the country while he was under FBI surveillance.”

Top Republican leaders flung their support behind former US president Donald Trump on Tuesday after an extraordinary FBI raid on his palatial Florida residence sparked a political firestorm in an already bitterly divided country.

The FBI move marked a stunning escalation of legal probes into the 45th president and comes as he is weighing another White House run.

Several former advisors to the 76-year-old Trump urged him to immediately confirm that he would be a presidential candidate in 2024.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Trump said of the FBI operation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach.

He denounced the FBI raid as a “weaponization of the Justice System” by “Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”

At the White House, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden did not have any advance notice about the raid and respected the independence of the Justice Department.

Asked about the potential for civil unrest in reaction to Trump’s legal problems, Jean-Pierre said “there’s no place for political violence in this country.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is led by Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, declined to provide a reason for the raid.

But US media outlets said agents were conducting a court-authorized search related to the potential mishandling of classified documents that had been sent to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House in January 2021.

Trump has also faced intense legal scrutiny for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and over the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

Since leaving office, Trump has remained the country’s most divisive figure, continuing to sow falsehoods that he actually won the 2020 vote.

A day after the  raid on Mar-A-Lago, US Representative Scott Perry — a Trump ally — said that FBI agents had confiscated his cell phone, but did not specify why it was taken.

“This morning, while traveling with my family, three FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone,” Perry told FOX News, condemning “these kinds of banana republic tactics.”

– Allies rally round –

Leading Republicans rallied around the former president, who was not present at Mar-a-Lago when the raid took place.

Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence, a potential 2024 rival, expressed “deep concern” and said the raid smacked of “partisanship” by the Justice Department.

Kevin McCarthy, who is seeking to become speaker of the House of Representatives if Republicans win November’s midterm elections, accused the Justice Department of “weaponized politicization.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said “launching an investigation of a former president this close to an election is beyond problematic.”

Representative Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, called it a “dark day in American history.”

“If the FBI can raid a US President, imagine what they can do to you,” Stefanik tweeted, to which Democratic Representative Ted Lieu replied: “Why can’t the FBI investigate a US President? We’re not Russia, where the law doesn’t apply to the head of state and his cronies.”

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, told NBC that “no person is above the law.”

– Presidential paperwork –

In his statement, Trump did not give any indication about why the FBI raided his home but said: “They even broke into my safe!”

Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director, told CNN that agents may have been looking for “something specific” related to the probe into the handling of classified information.

The National Archives said in February that it had recovered 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago and asked the Justice Department to look into Trump’s handling of classified material.

The recovery of the boxes raised questions about Trump’s adherence to presidential records laws enacted after the 1970s Watergate scandal that require Oval Office occupants to preserve records.

Trump’s former communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin told CNN the raid could fire up his supporters, a small number of whom rallied outside Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

“If it’s seen as some sort of massive overreach and not something incredibly serious, this is a very good day for Donald Trump,” Farah Griffin said.

For weeks, Washington has been riveted by hearings in Congress about the January 6 storming of the Capitol and Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has been repeatedly pushed over whether the Justice Department is building a case against Trump over the Capitol riot.

Trump is also being investigated for his efforts to alter the 2020 voting results in the state of Georgia, while his business practices are being probed in New York in separate cases.

US health authorities on Tuesday authorized a new procedure for injecting the monkeypox vaccine that should make it possible to inoculate more people with the same amount of the drug, at a time when doses are running short in the country. 

The Food and Drug Administration also authorized giving the vaccine to people under the age of 18 who are considered to be at high risk of infection. 

For those over 18, health workers will now be able to administer the vaccine differently, via an intradermal injection — that is, between the upper layers of the skin — and not with a deeper, subcutaneous injection. 

The new method will “increase the total number of doses available for use by up to five-fold,” the FDA said in a statement. 

Two injections, four weeks apart, will still be necessary. 

The FDA said it was drawing on data from a 2015 clinical trial that showed a similar immune response in people given a subcutaneous injection compared to those given a fifth of the dose via an intradermal shot. 

At present, some 620,000 doses of the vaccine — manufactured by Bavarian Nordic, and marketed under the name Jynneos in the United States — have been distributed across the country.

Another 440,000 additional doses are still to be distributed, which could allow up to 2.2 million injections under the new strategy. 

The government has also ordered an additional five million doses, which will start arriving from September and run through 2023, affording the potential to administer 25 million doses. 

The decisions came after the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the vaccine, a move that itself followed the declaration of a public health emergency last week. 

For the authorization in minors, the FDA said it had reviewed safety data for the vaccine, as well as data for another vaccine given in children against smallpox. 

“We feel very comfortable with the safety of the approach,” said Peter Marks of the FDA at a press conference, noting a recent increase in the number of children who have potentially been exposed to infected people. 

The United States has registered nearly 9,000 cases of monkeypox, a fifth of them in New York state. The vast majority of cases involve men who have had sex with men.

A grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict a white woman whose accusation that Black teenager Emmett Till propositioned her in 1955 led to his abduction and murder, which helped sparked the civil rights movement, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

The grand jury decided after seven hours of deliberation that there was insufficient evidence to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was 21 at the time of Till’s killing, of complicity in his kidnap and murder, Dewayne Richardson, the prosecutor for Leflore County, said in a statement.

The decision came a month after an unserved arrest warrant from the time of the crime was found in the basement of the Leflore County courthouse for Donham, her husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam. 

The two men — both now deceased — were arrested and acquitted on murder charges by an all-white jury, but Donham was never taken into custody.

The pair later admitted in a magazine interview that they had killed the boy.

Last month, US media reported that an unpublished memoir written by Donham claimed she was unaware that Till would be tortured and murdered.

In her account, she said the men brought the boy to her in the middle of the night and she denied it was him, but that he himself admitted it.

In 2004, the Justice Department had reopened the investigation, but was unable to press any charges due to the statute of limitations. 

In 2017, the author of a book on the case said Donham had confessed that Till had never made any advances. The Justice Department reopened the file again, but investigators failed to determine whether she had invented the incident or not, and the investigation was closed again in December 2021.

Till, who lived in Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he and some other local children visited the store owned by the Bryants, where Donham was working alone.

She said at the time he had propositioned her and touched her on the arm, hand and waist.

His disfigured body was found a few days later in a river. The decision by his mother to have the body displayed in an open casket at the funeral brought home the horrors of lynchings and discrimination in the South, and helped trigger the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Till’s cousin, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr, told CBS News that the decision was “unfortunate but predictable” after “hundreds of years of anti-Black systems that guaranteed those who killed Emmett Till would go unpunished, to this day.” 

In March, a new law named after Till came into effect making racist lynchings a federal crime with a punishment of up to 30 years in prison.

Moscow insisted Tuesday that major blasts at a key military airbase on the Russian-annexed Crimea peninsula were caused by exploding ammunition rather than Ukrainian fire.

Dramatic amateur footage shared on social media appeared to show panicked holidaymakers fleeing a Crimean beach with young children, as ballooning clouds of grey smoke rose over the horizon.

The blasts rocked the Saki airfield on the 167th day of Moscow’s invasion.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and has used the region as a staging ground for its attacks on Ukraine, but it has rarely been a target for Ukrainian forces.

The Russian defence ministry said “several aviation munitions detonated” at the base in an incident the head of the region said had left one person dead. 

Local health officials earlier said five people, including one child, had been injured.

The defence ministry said it was looking to establish the reason for the explosions but indicated the airfield was not targeted in an attack.

There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv.

Ukraine’s army, which for months pleaded for long-range artillery from Western allies, has been hitting targets deeper in Russian-held territory since some started arriving in recent weeks. 

Kyiv has also taken credit for several acts of sabotage inside Russian-held territory.

Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine in the wake of massive nationwide street demonstrations that led to the ouster of a Kremlin-friendly president.

Those protests precipitated fighting between the army and Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, which would lay the groundwork for Moscow’s full-scale assault on February 24 this year.

The invasion has left thousands dead, forced millions in Ukraine from their homes, and littered the country with land mines.

On Tuesday, the United States announced that it will provide $89 million for demining efforts in Ukraine.

“Russia’s unlawful and unprovoked further invasion of Ukraine has littered massive swaths of the country with landmines, unexploded ordnance, and improvised explosive devices,” the State Department said in a statement.

“These explosive hazards block access to fertile farmland, delay reconstruction efforts, prevent displaced communities from returning to their homes, and continue to kill and maim innocent Ukrainian civilians,” it said. 

– Mandatory evacuations –

The Russian invasion has led to a deep rupture in economic ties between Moscow and the West.

In response to sanctions for the invasion, Russia has squeezed gas supplies to Europe.

It announced on Tuesday that its oil deliveries through Ukraine had been halted.

Transneft, the Russian pipeline operator, said the Ukrainian side had stopped flows because it was “not receiving funds for these services”.

The Ukrainian side did not comment.

One of the impacted countries, Slovakia, confirmed flows had been halted for several days, and a spokesman for Bratislava refinery Slovnaft cited “technical problems at the bank level in connection with the payment of transit fees from the Russian side”.

The Kremlin lashed out after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview that Europe should close their borders to Russians in response to the war. 

The Ukrainian leader told The Washington Post that current Western sanctions against Moscow were too weak, in a call that has been echoed by Russia’s neighbours Estonia and Finland.

“The irrationality of thinking in this case is off the charts,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

On the frontlines, Ukraine said Russia was pursuing a campaign of bombardment of the east of the country that has left much of the industrial Donbas region in ruins.

Kyiv said Tuesday it had transported at least 3,000 people out of the battle-scarred eastern region of Donetsk since it ordered evacuations ahead of winter. 

The Ukrainian authorities are asking people to leave the area, as they do not expect to be able to provide it with heat during the cold winter months.

The presidency earlier said that three people had been killed and 19 more wounded in Russian shelling across the Donetsk region on Monday.

The head of the central region of Dnipro, meanwhile, said that 11 medical facilities had relocated there from the battle-torn Kharkiv and Lugansk regions further east.

“Those facilities transferred over 100 pieces of equipment and 10 ambulances,” Dnipro regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

“The hospitals are restarting work. They are mostly receiving displaced people.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday said the United States was “concerned” by “credible” reports that Rwanda is supporting rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The resurgence of the M23 group in Congo’s restive east has exacerbated tensions between the neighbours, with Kinshasa accusing Kigali of backing the rebels.

Blinken was speaking in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, where he arrived on Tuesday for the second leg of a three-nation African tour and met President Felix Tshisekedi.

Rwanda has denied the allegations and Blinken is due to visit the country following a one-day stay in the DRC.

“We are very concerned by credible reports that Rwanda has supported the M23,” the top US diplomat told a press conference in Kinshasa. 

“All countries have to respect their neighbours’ territorial integrity. Any entry of foreign forces into the DRC must be done transparently and with the consent of the DRC.”

Blinken added that he was “not turning a blind eye” and would discuss the issue with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

He said his trip to the region was to ensure US support for mediation efforts led by Angola and Kenya “to prevent further violence, to end conflict (and) to preserve the territorial integrity of the DRC”.

He spoke after visiting South Africa on Monday, where he said the United States was seeking a “true partnership” with Africa.

– Strained relations –

The DRC is seeking international support as it struggles with Rwanda over the M23, a primarily Congolese Tutsi group that is one of many operating in the troubled east.

After lying mostly dormant for years, the rebels resumed fighting late last year, seizing the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border in June and prompting thousands of people to flee their homes.

In a 131-page report to the UN Security Council seen last week by AFP, experts said Rwandan troops had intervened militarily inside the DRC since at least November. 

Rwanda also “provided troop reinforcements” for specific M23 operations, the experts’ report said, “in particular when these aimed at seizing strategic towns and areas”.

Congolese Foreign Minister Christophe Lutundula on Tuesday urged the United Nations to make the report public.

“We demand the Security Council publish (this) report in its entirety,” he said.

Kinshasa and Kigali have had strained relations since the mass influx of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

Relations began to thaw after Tshisekedi took office in 2019 but the M23’s resurgence has revived tensions.

The group, also known as the “March 23 Movement”, first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured the city of Goma before a joint Congolese-UN offensive drove it out.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has led an initiative to disarm the active rebel groups, while Angolan counterpart Joao Lourenco has worked to ease tensions between Kinshasa and Kigali.

– Rwanda and M23 –

Blinken arrived in Kinshasa from South Africa, where he said the United States was seeking a “true partnership” with Africa and was not vying with other powers for influence on the continent.

Tshisekedi was to “raise the questions of strategic partnership” between the DRC and the United States during his meeting with Blinken at the presidential palace, his office said in a statement Monday.

On the eve of Blinken’s swing through the DRC and Rwanda, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged him to condemn the M23 attacks and press Rwanda on its rights record, which included a “brutal” crackdown on dissent.

“As in 2012, the M23 are committing war crimes against civilians,” said a HRW statement.

“Witnesses described summary killings of at least 29 people, including children, in June and July… The US should raise with Rwanda the reliable reports that it is again supporting the M23’s abusive conduct in eastern Congo.”

The M23 is just one of scores of armed groups that roam eastern DRC, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that flared late last century.

One of the bloodiest militias is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — an organisation the Islamic State group describes as its “Central Africa Province” affiliate.

The US State Department placed the ADF on its list of IS-linked “terrorist” organisations in March 2021.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday said the United States was “concerned” by “credible” reports that Rwanda is supporting rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The resurgence of the M23 group in Congo’s restive east has exacerbated tensions between the neighbours, with Kinshasa accusing Kigali of backing the rebels.

Blinken was speaking in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, where he arrived on Tuesday for the second leg of a three-nation African tour and met President Felix Tshisekedi.

Rwanda has denied the allegations and Blinken is due to visit the country following a one-day stay in Kinshasa.

“We are very concerned by credible reports that Rwanda has supported the M23,” the top US diplomat told a press conference in Kinshasa. 

“All countries have to respect their neighbours’ territorial integrity,” he added, saying he was “not turning a blind eye” and would discuss the issue with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Blinken said his trip to the region was to ensure US support for mediation efforts led by Angola and Kenya “to prevent further violence, to end conflict (and) to preserve the territorial integrity of the DRC”.

The DRC is seeking international support as it struggles with Rwanda over the M23, a primarily Congolese Tutsi group that is one of many operating in the troubled east.

After lying mostly dormant for years, the rebels resumed fighting late last year, seizing the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border in June and prompting thousands of people to flee their homes.

In a 131-page report to the UN Security Council seen last week by AFP, experts said Rwandan troops had intervened militarily inside the DRC since at least November. 

Rwanda also “provided troop reinforcements” for specific M23 operations, the experts’ report said, “in particular when these aimed at seizing strategic towns and areas”.

Kinshasa and Kigali have had strained relations since the mass influx of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

Relations began to thaw after Tshisekedi took office in 2019 but the M23’s resurgence has revived tensions.

The group, also known as the “March 23 Movement”, first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured the city of Goma before a joint Congolese-UN offensive drove it out.

– Rwanda and M23 –

Blinken arrived in Kinshasa from South Africa, where he said the United States was seeking a “true partnership” with Africa and was not vying with other powers for influence on the continent.

Tshisekedi was to “raise the questions of strategic partnership” between the DRC and the United States during his meeting with Blinken at the presidential palace, his office said in a statement Monday.

On the eve of Blinken’s swing through the DRC and Rwanda, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged him to condemn the M23 attacks and press Rwanda on its rights record, which included a “brutal” crackdown on dissent.

“As in 2012, the M23 are committing war crimes against civilians,” said a HRW statement.

“Witnesses described summary killings of at least 29 people, including children, in June and July… The US should raise with Rwanda the reliable reports that it is again supporting the M23’s abusive conduct in eastern Congo.”

The M23 is just one of scores of armed groups that roam eastern DRC, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that flared late last century.

One of the bloodiest militias is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — an organisation the Islamic State group describes as its “Central Africa Province” affiliate.

The State Department placed the ADF on its list of IS-linked “terrorist” organisations in March 2021.