A former Twitter employee who took bribes from the Saudi Arabian government was sentenced to three and a half years in prison Thursday.

Ahmad Abouammo, a 44-year-old man who worked as a media partnership manager for Twitter's Middle East and North Africa region, was convicted of acting as a foreign agent without notice to the Attorney General, conspiracy, wire fraud, international money laundering, and falsification of records in a federal investigation.

According to a statement released by the Justice Department before Abouammo's sentencing, evidence shows Abouammo guilty of taking "bribes in exchange for accessing, monitoring, and conveying the private information of Twitter users to officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Royal family."

A jury found Abouammo guilty in August, with court documents showing him accepting thousands of dollars worth of gifts as he provided information about Saudi dissidents' Twitter accounts to close advisors of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Justice Department has said it believes that another former Twitter employee accused of accessing user accounts and a man accused of helping the Saudi government with the scheme have fled to Saudi Arabia to evade American authorities.

"This case revealed that foreign governments will bribe insiders to obtain the user information that is collected and stored by our Silicon Valley social media companies," U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds said in a statement. "In handing down today's sentence, the Court emphasized that defendant shared the user information with a foreign government known for not tolerating dissidents, and he did so working with his even more culpable co-defendant who fled the country rather than face trial."

The Saudi government had become infamous for its treatment of political dissidents, boiling over when it faced international condemnation following the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In April, Saudi courts sentenced Salma al-Shehab, a citizen and 34-year-old mother of two children, to 34 years in prison for tweets protesting the government.

"The FBI works tirelessly to ensure foreign governments and their agents cannot interfere with the constitutionally protected right to free speech," said FBI San Francisco Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp following Abouammo's sentencing. "Today's sentence demonstrates the Bureau's dedication to following all leads to ensure perpetrators of transnational repression are brought to justice."

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