Ghada Oueiss you think you are in danger.
In 2020, the Lebanese journalist from Al Jazeera published an opinion piece in the Washington Post in which he described how hackers had stolen his private photos and videos to post them online. After this leak, the virtual attacks began. And with the antecedent of the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in 2018, he fears that the brutality he experiences online will spill over into the real world.
One of the main protagonists in this ferocious attack on Oueiss was Sharon VanRider, resident of Florida, United States. On June 9, 2020, he retweeted a hacked photo of the journalist in a hot tub. It went viral, in some cases the image was deceptively doctored to make the woman appear naked. Thousands of users in Saudi Arabia directed misogynistic insults at the reporter, whose primetime show features tough and incisive interviews with Middle Eastern political figures.
As revealed by a six-month investigation coordinated by the consortium Forbidden Stories in which 30 European media outlets participated and which focused on disinformation campaigns and attacks on personalities and companies through bots and “digital mercenaries”attacks by Van Rider (who also publicly praised Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince of Saudi Arabia) were relentless: calling her a liar; he accused her of having “sold out to terrorists to get a story” and that she worked for “a network that broadcasts anti-Semitism.”
“It was strange that an American citizen, who doesn’t speak Arabic… who doesn’t know me… tweets about me day and night,” Oueiss told Forbidden Stories.
But now the picture is clearer. Van Rider would have received money from the Saudi monarchy in exchange for his tweets, according to an investigation by Die Zeit. Van Rider had met Sattam bin Khalid al Saud, a Saudi prince, in Dubai in April 2019. Months after that meeting, the attacks began.
The Forbidden Stories was able to access official documents that reveal that the fbi opened an investigation into Van Rider’s activities, with the aim of discovering who financed it and whether it violated US law. As Van Rider declared in 2022, she would have received the money from an intermediary to avoid the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a US rule that requires any foreigner seeking to influence local public opinion to register with the Department of Justice and file public reports. Failure to do so is a violation of federal law and can result in fines and imprisonment.
In Van Rider’s case, the method of paying him was through a man named Jerry Maherwho, between November 2019 and March 2020, transferred at least four installments of USD 2,500.
But Van Rider would not be the only part of the Saudi prince’s scheme: he said that he attended a meeting in Miami in 2019 during which the Saudi prince would have paid some USD 175,000 (in cash and through a third party), to a US citizen close to right-wing circles. The destination of that money? Fund internet activities that target rivals to the Saudi monarchy.
For-profit disinformation campaigns are commonplace, but the move to the virtual world means a new kind of mercenary, or “digital influence mercenary”, a field with great prospects for the future and high demand. There is a monetary motivation, without a doubt, but in several cases there may also be an ideological one, as is the case, for example, with the supporters of Donald Trump.
As he told Forbidden Stories marc owen jonesAssociate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, involving Americans in a campaign of harassment led by Saudi Arabia makes sense: “From a disinformation standpoint, it’s one thing to use bots and trolls. But if you can get Americans to organically absorb Saudi talking points and then replicate those talking points on their own social media, then theoretically those talking points could then go viral among the online Republican community.”
Jerry Maher, who acted as an intermediary between the Saudis and Van Rider, already had years of close ties with that Arab monarchy. Born Daniel Ahmad El Ghoch, he is a former Saudi television channel presenter and president and CEO of Sawt Beirut International. He is also a media adviser to Bahaa Hariri, a Saudi-Lebanese billionaire close to the Saudi regime.
He left Lebanon in 2010 and settled in Sweden, where the authorities granted him a protected status, reserved for people subject to threats, in order to guarantee the confidentiality of his personal information. There he began his voracious attacks on the web, directed at critics of the Saudi regime. when they murdered Jamal KhashoggiMaher tweeted that those investigating the murder would “burn in hell.”
In January 2019, he attacked Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and owner of Washington Post: “If you become an enemy of Saudi Arabia, you will be destroyed, belittled and fired by God.”
In February 2019, Oueiss herself invited Maher to her show, where he defended Saudi Arabia’s position on the Khashoggi murder. But later, behind the camera, Maher told Oueiss that he believed MBS ordered the assassination.. “He is capable of being the spokesman for a dictatorship. He is capable of doing anything for you if you pay him,” said the journalist.
Oueiss interpreted Khashoggi’s murder as a warning. “Maybe what they did to Khashoggi would happen to me because they attacked him on social media and then killed him,” he told Forbidden Stories. She considered Khashoggi her mentor.
When the attacks on her began, Oueiss headlined her opinion piece for the Washington Post as: “I am a journalist from the Middle East. Online attacks will not silence me”. A group of Trump supporters rushed to reinforce the attacks.
Van Rider named Maria Maalouf in his statement to the FBI as part of the “media project” targeting Oueiss and alleged that it was financed by Al Saud. Maalouf is a Washington DC-based journalist of Lebanese origin who claims to be the co-chair of Prolific Solutions, a consulting firm.
According to the research of Forbidden Storiesanother professional influencer who attacked Oueiss online is Irina Tsukerman, a New York-based lawyer who echoes narratives close to those of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in videos, opinion pieces and television appearances. “Tsukerman offers ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ ‘information warfare’ services through his US-based company, Scarab Rising, and advocates at the UN Human Rights Council with a shady Yemeni NGO, the Yemeni Coalition. of Independent Women”, reveals the investigation.
According to Owen Jones, there will always be a space for “attack dog” because there is a constant market for someone who is “not afraid to say anything” but also “has qualifications from a good university”.
Meanwhile, Ouessis continues to block his attackers on Twitter. But sometimes, the weight of this virtual violence is too much: “It’s a new way to kill journalists virtually, silence them. Instead of paying someone to physically murder you, you pay someone to virtually murder you through social media.
With information from Forbidden Stories
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