“Abdullah Alaoudh, Saudi director at the Freedom Initiative, a US-based nonprofit, said: ‘Col Rabih’s defection marks a unique and rare event in Saudi Arabia within the police and security forces. The Saudi government has a long history of transnational repression, of harassing, stalking, silencing, intimidating and even assassinating dissidents abroad – Alenezi is just a recent example.'”

“Any influence the U.S. had is rapidly waning as MBS continues his crackdown on dissent with impunity,” she said. “I hope this trip is a chance to turn the tide and put the U.S. back on the side of human-rights defenders.”

But Abdullah Alaoudh, Saudi director of the Freedom Initiative, which advocates for the rights of detainees in the Middle East and north Africa, said he believed the Biden administration’s lack of attention to the issue helps explain the worsening human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, including ‘unprecedented level of executions and arrest of people over social media use.’”

“It shouldn’t require a federal lawsuit for a U.S. citizen to protect herself from Saudi Arabia’s thugs, but Areej has been left with no other options. We hope U.S. courts can provide them both with some measure of justice and protection that is sadly unavailable elsewhere,” Andrea J. Prasow, executive director of the Freedom Initiative, said in a statement.

“The novel case, filed under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute, cites repeated security failures that allowed the informants working for Twitter to send information about thousands of anonymous users to the Saudi regime while royal funds were invested in the company, becoming one of its largest shareholders.”