Saudi Arabia has released a 72-year-old US citizen who was jailed for critical tweets about the kingdom’s government and the crown prince, his son said on Tuesday.
Saad Ibrahim Almadi, a U.S.-Saudi citizen and retired project leader who lived in Florida, was imprisoned for more than a year and sentenced to 19 years.
His son, Ibrahim Almadi, told NBC News early Tuesday that all charges against his father were dropped and that he was at his home in Riyadh with his family, but was banned from traveling.
“He considers the United States his home, not Saudi Arabia,” Ibrahim said of his father, adding that he was worried about the elder Almadi’s health.
“He requires immediate medical attention and attention in the United States. [reason]The travel ban worries us a lot,” he added. Ibrahim said he was confident that the family would be able to bring his father back to his family in the US with the assistance of the State Department.
Neither the Saudi authorities nor the US government have confirmed Almadi’s release.
The case was one of many alleged human rights abuses that have strained relations between the two countries, which publicly raised the issue of oil supplies late last year following a clash over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
President Joe Biden has previously said he raised concerns about Almadi’s imprisonment and the affairs of other US citizens during meetings with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when he visited Saudi Arabia in July to reset relations.
Since the crown prince’s rise to power – a de facto ruler bent on opening up and modernizing the ultra-conservative kingdom – human rights groups have expressed growing concern about the Saudi government’s crackdown on dissent.
Almadi’s son said his father was arrested on multiple charges, including supporting terrorism, shortly after landing in Riyadh in November 2021 to visit family.
In October, the court sentenced him to 16 years. 2022, his son said. Last month, an appeals court extended his sentence to 19 years.
Ibrahim said that his father was detained due to several tweets sent over the past few years.
He added that his father was not an activist, but a private individual who expressed his opinion on Twitter while in the US, where free speech is a constitutional right.
According to the Associated Press, Almadi’s tweets included one noting the crown prince’s rise in power in the kingdom, and a tweet that talked about Khashoggi’s murder.
The news of Almadi’s release comes a week after his son met with State Department officials. “I gave the whistle to Saad[‘s] state,” Ibrahim tweeted March 14th.
“His only way back is through wrongfully delayed identification. They assure me that the process [is] continues and freedom of speech should never be criminalized,” he continued.
In a statement released on Tuesday, The Freedom Initiative, an American human rights organization campaigning for the freedom of prisoners illegally detained in the Middle East and North Africa, welcomed the news.
“We are pleased that Saad Almadi has been released, but he should not have spent a day behind bars for harmless tweets,” Abdullah Alaud, the Saudi director of the organization, said in a statement.
The Freedom Initiative reports that at least six people from the US are currently detained or trapped due to politically motivated travel bans to Saudi Arabia.
“There are too many non-U.S. people in Saudi custody to draw attention to their cases,” Alaud added. “Almadi’s release shows that strategic pressure is at work and US officials must continue to press for the release of prisoners and the lifting of travel bans.”