US-Saudi dual citizen jailed for tweets criticizing the kingdom released
A dual citizen of the US and Saudi Arabia was released from prison on Tuesday after posting messages critical of the Middle Eastern kingdom on Twitter in 2021.
Saad Almadi, a 72-year-old retired project manager, was released at 2am on Tuesday morning from a prison in Saudi Arabia.
Almadi was arrested in 2021 while visiting family members on a two-week trip to Riyadh. After he was detained by Saudi authorities, they accused him of writing 14 Tweets critical of the Saudi government, as well as having an ‘insulting picture’ of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman saved on his phone.
Almadi said he wrote many of the Tweets years ago, mainly while he was living and working with his family in Florida.
Almadi was convicted by the kingdom’s Specialized Criminal Court. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in October 2022. After US officials pressed for his release, a Saudi appeals court added another 3 years to his sentence.
Meanwhile, Almadi’s family in the United States began advocating for his release.
‘My father is a senior American citizen who just wants to live freely and happy in the United States where he got his education,’ his son Ibrahim Almadi told CNN in 2022.
Ibrahim confirmed his father was finally released on Tuesday morning. He is currently staying with family members in Riyadh.
Even though he was released early on Tuesday morning, he remains banned from leaving the country and returning to the United States.
‘He is not free until he is in the States,’ Ibrahim said on Tuesday. ‘Now we have to fight the travel ban.’
‘We are relieved that Saad Almadi has been released, but he should have never spent a day behind bars for innocuous tweets,’ Abdullah Alaoudh, the Saudi director of the Freedom Initiative, said in a statement on Monday. ‘Almadi was wrongfully detained, reportedly tortured, and released only after tireless campaigning by his son and international pressure.’
It was not immediately clear why Almadi was released, but the Saudi government frequently pardons prisoners before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on Wednesday evening.
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