The United States confirmed on Tuesday that an American had been jailed in Saudi Arabia for tweeting anti-king and claimed to have taken his case to the Saudis, a case that is fueling tensions between the two countries’ allies . According to The Washington Post, Saad Ibrahim Almadi, a 72-year-old American citizen of Saudi origin, was tortured and then sentenced to 16 years in prison in early October, a sentence followed by a 16-year ban on leaving the country. . His son confirmed these details to AFP.
“Intense concern” from the US government
The State Department said Washington had spoken to the Saudis about its case as early as December and as recently as Monday. “We have consistently and vigorously raised our concerns about this matter at a high level within the Saudi government through communication channels in Riyadh and Washington,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told the press. “Exercising freedom of expression should never be criminalized,” he continued. The State Department said no US official was present at the Oct. 3 sentencing hearing because Saudi authorities rescheduled the hearing before bringing it forward.
“We only heard from the Saudi government after October 3,” Vedant Patel said without further details. However, in the Washington Post, Saad Ibrahim Almadi’s son claimed to have informed US authorities about the hearing. According to the daily, Saad Ibrahim Almadi, who lives in Florida and had traveled to Saudi Arabia to visit his family, was arrested at the airport in November over 14 tweets he had written over the past seven years. The offensive tweets included views on corruption in Saudi Arabia and the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the dismembered Saudi journalist at the compound of his country’s consulate in Istanbul, according to Saad’s son Ibrahim Almadi.
According to the same source, he was specifically accused of supporting terrorism and trying to destabilize the kingdom. Before his election, President Joe Biden vowed to treat Saudi Arabia as an “outcast” over the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. But this summer he paid a visit to the country, where he met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A move strongly criticized by human rights defenders, according to which Washington gave way mainly for economic reasons with regard to oil.