Ex-OpenAI engineer faces detention in alleged bugging case
What’s new: Prosecutors say he was days from leaving for Saudi Arabia, which has no extradition treaty with the US.
Federal prosecutors asked a judge in San Francisco to keep former OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan jailed pending trial, arguing he posed a serious flight risk after allegedly planting a recording device in a company conference room. In a court filing, prosecutors said the 35-year-old Saudi national was only days away from leaving for Saudi Arabia before his arrest and remained in frequent contact with a member of the Saudi royal family. They also said his wife and infant son left the United States on one-way tickets paid for by a Saudi military official. Defense lawyers say the family had long planned a paternity-leave trip, that Alfozan has lived in the US for 15 years, and that he should be released to home confinement with GPS monitoring.