NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – Twitter is asking a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit that claims it is “in league with” Saudi Arabia.
Ali Al-Ahmed, a political refugee, filed the case in June in New York federal court. He claims Saudi people working for Twitter accessed his information to identify him as a critic of the government.
He claims his most popular account, with about 36,000 followers, is suspended. Twitter says it can’t be held liable for two employees who were acting on behalf of Saudi Arabia in 2014-15. The Department of Justice filed criminal complaints against three individuals last year.
“This lawsuit comes more than four years after Twitter discovered and stopped the (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s) activities, more than four years after Twitter notified Al-Ahmed of the unauthorized intrusion of his account, and more than two years after the suspension of Al-Ahmed’s Twitter account in May 2018 (an event unrelated to the KSA’s espionage),” the Nov. 9 motion to dismiss says.
“(A)s a result of Al-Ahmed’s delay in filing suit despite having notice of the underlying facts, eight of his nine causes of action against Twitter are either partly or entirely time-barred.”
Twitter also says it can’t be found vicariously liable for its employees’ actions and that Al-Ahmed’s free speech claim fails because Twitter “is not a governmental actor and is thus not subject to the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”
The real target of Al-Ahmed’s litigation should be Saudi Arabia, Twitter says.
“Twitter did not spy on Al-Ahmed’s account or harass his friends and associates; nor did it abet the KSA’s alleged conduct.”