[Huffpoo] Mole was part of a "troll farm’ operation to attack critics under orders of Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, reports the New York Times.The Saudi government apparently groomed a mole inside Twitter to keep tabs on dissidents as part of a wide-ranging operation that also unleashed vicious social media attacks on them, The New York Times reported Saturday.
The mole was part of a sophisticated online effort "dictated" by controversial Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman and carried out by his advisers to quash domestic and international criticism of Saudi Arabia, according to the Times.
One of the dissidents viciously attacked as part of the ongoing operation was the late Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. Each morning he awoke to a vile onslaught of Twitter attacks, said the Times.
"The mornings were the worst for him because he would wake up to the equivalent of sustained gunfire online," Khashoggi’s longtime friend Maggie Mitchell Salem told the Times.
The Saudi government finally admitted Friday that Khashoggi was killed inside the country’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 ‐ during a physical altercation, according to state-owned media. Turkish officials, who reportedly have an audio tape of Khashoggi’s death, say he was murdered in the consulate by a Saudi hit squad and dismembered under orders of the government. The Saudi version of events has been largely met with derision.