Saudi Arabia frees US citizen imprisoned for tweeting

• Saad Ibrahim Almadi was detained in November 2021 while visiting his family in Riyadh.
• He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
• A Saudi court found Mr. Almadi guilty of attempting to destabilize the country.

Saudi Arabia has released a US citizen who had been imprisoned for more than a year over tweets critical of the kingdom.

Saad Ibrahim Almadi, 72, a Saudi national, was detained in November 2021 while visiting his family in Riyadh.

He was sentenced to 16 years in prison last year for tweets he wrote while in the United States.

Mr. Almadi’s release has received no comment from either the US or Saudi authorities.

His son, Ibrahim, acknowledged his father was in Riyadh at a family residence, but it was unclear when he would return to his home in Florida.

16-year travel ban

“All charges have been dropped but we have to fight the travel ban now,” Ibrahim told sources.

A Saudi court found Mr. Almadi guilty of attempting to destabilize the country as well as sponsoring and funding terrorists. He was also given a 16-year travel ban.

In a month, an appeals court doubled his sentence to 19 years.

This year, speaking publicly about the issue for the first time, Ibrahim told the sources that the sole evidence finally offered to the court against his father consisted of 14 tweets.

The tweets seen by the sources included criticism of the demolition of old portions of Mecca and Jeddah, concern about poverty in the country, and a reference to the slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

According to his son, Mr Almadi was also found guilty of failing to notify terrorism for tweets written on a second account by Ibrahim.

US President Joseph Biden said he mentioned Mr Almadi’s situation, as well as the cases of other US nationals still barred from entering Saudi Arabia, during discussions with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last July.

Mr Biden’s visit, some four years after Mr Khashoggi’s murder, saw him lobby for greater oil supplies and seek assistance in isolating Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

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