According to his son, a retired Florida project manager was tortured and sentenced to 16 years in prison by Saudi Arabia for tweets he posted in the United States criticizing the Saudi regime.
72-year-old Saad Ibrahim Almadi possesses both US and Saudi citizenship. According to his son Ibrahim, he was caught in November while visiting family in Saudi Arabia and sentenced earlier this month, according to an opinion piece published on Sunday by Josh Rogin of The Washington Post.
Almadi was jailed for posting 14 tweets over the past seven years, some of which criticized government corruption and policy mistakes, according to his son. The retired project manager also tweeted about Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist infamously murdered by Saudi operatives in 2018, according to Ibrahim of The Post.
—Gurbaksh Singh Chahal (@gchahal)
18 October 2022
According to the Associated Press, State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel confirmed Almadi’s detention by Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, Patel told reporters, “We have constantly and vigorously expressed our concerns regarding this matter with senior levels of the Saudi administration in both Riyadh and Washington DC, and we will continue to do so.”
According to the site, he added, “We mentioned this issue with members of the Saudi administration as recently as yesterday.”
Ibrahim told The Guardian that Saudi agents abducted his father from an airport and held him in a hotel while they searched his phone.
Ibrahim told The Guardian that Almadi felt secure flying to Saudi Arabia for a visit due to his American citizenship and his tribe’s strong connections there.
The Post reported that Almadi was later convicted of harboring a terrorist ideology, attempting to disrupt the Saudi kingdom, and supporting and funding terrorism.
In addition to his imprisonment, he was given a 16-year travel ban, meaning that if the full term is carried out, he will be 87 years old upon his release and 104 years old when he is allowed to return to the United States, according to the news source.
According to the Associated Press, Ibrahim accused the Saudi government of torturing his father when his family contacted the US State Department in March.
In his interview with the AP, he also claimed that the State Department botched his father’s case by not declaring him a “wrongfully detained” American, which would have elevated Almadi’s case to a higher priority.
The US Department of State did not react immediately to Insider’s request for comment.
Another instance of Saudi Arabia’s repression of opposition
Almadi’s arrest and conviction is the second high-profile event this year in which Saudi Arabia — usually regarded as a US ally — sentenced one of its residents to a significant prison term for social media posts made while overseas.
The Guardian reported in August that Salma al-Shehab, a Saudi student at Leeds University in the United Kingdom, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for retweeting activists who opposed the Saudi regime. She had a limited following herself, with 159 Instagram followers and fewer than 3,000 Twitter followers, according to the outlet.
—Amnesty International’s Twitter account
August 18, 2022
Human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now reported in August that Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, a Saudi national, was sentenced to 45 years in prison over her tweets.
The arrests are viewed as a crackdown on dissent by the West under the ascendant Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He has campaigned for the diversification of Saudi Arabia’s economy and advocated for a “more moderate Islam” in his country, but he has also been involved in controversy due to his unyielding stance toward criticism.
In July, President Joe Biden and Prince Mohammed were captured on camera slapping fists. In the wake of Khashoggi’s murder, critics of Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia claimed he compromised his 2019 pledge to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state.
—Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn)
July 15, 2022
Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which were already tight, deteriorated further when the OPEC+ group announced earlier this month that they would reduce oil production by two million barrels per day in conjunction with Russia.
The White House described the announcement as a “clear” indication that OPEC+, which includes Saudi Arabia, “aligned with Russia.”
In a CNN interview, Biden stated, “There will be repercussions for what they have done with Russia.”