Twitter said on Friday that it had removed or suspended thousands of accounts with ties to governments in the Middle East, including the account of Saud el-Qahtani, a former close adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.

Twitter said it suspended Mr. Qahtani’s account because of “violations of our platform manipulation policies.” The company declined to provide more details, but said in a blog post that it took down 5,000 other accounts for what it described as inauthentic behavior or spamming.

Mr. Qahtani has been linked to the murder of The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. He had been described as a close friend and adviser of Prince Mohammed, but Saudi state media reported several weeks after Mr. Khashoggi’s death that he had been dismissed from his post.

Before it was suspended, Mr. Qahtani’s Twitter account had 1.3 million followers. But the account had largely gone silent after Mr. Khashoggi’s death last year.