Another point of contention between the longtime friends, the US stated on Tuesday that it was pressing with Saudi Arabia a prison term imposed on a US citizen over tweets critical of the kingdom.
The United States brought up Saad Ibrahim Almadi’s incarceration beginning in December and as recently as Monday, according to the State Department, which also confirmed his detention. Almadi is a US citizen with Saudi ancestry.
Ibrahim Almadi’s son verified to AFP that his father was given a 16-year prison term for the tweets.
“We have consistently and intensively raised our concerns regarding the case at senior levels of the Saudi government, both through channels in Riyadh and Washington,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
“Exercising freedom of expression should never be criminalized,” he said.
According to The Washington Post, Almadi, a Florida resident who had travelled to see family, was detained in November at the airport because of 14 tweets he had sent out over the preceding seven years.
According to the newspaper’s citation of Ibrahim, Almadi, 72, was sentenced on October 3 to 16 years in prison and a subsequent 16-year travel ban.
The son informed the newspaper that his father had only made “mild” comments in tweets about Saudi Arabia’s corruption and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist who was killed in 2018 after being tricked into entering the country’s Istanbul consulate.
According to his son, who confirmed the Post’s reporting to AFP, Almadi was charged with aiming to undermine the kingdom and supporting and funding terrorists.
According to the State Department, no US representation attended the sentence because Saudi Arabia initially scheduled the hearing for a later date before moving it ahead.
“We did not hear back from the Saudi government until after the October 3 date” of the sentencing, Patel said, without confirming the details of the decision.
Even though the powerful crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, had been shielded from serious consequences by then-president Donald Trump, Washington was outraged by the assassination of Khashoggi, a writer for The Washington Post.
President Joe Biden promised to be harsher, including with Saudi Arabia’s deadly war in Yemen, after declassifying intelligence that revealed the crown prince had ordered the killing.
Nevertheless, in July, Biden visited Saudi Arabia and was pictured shaking hands with the crown prince during a trip that was reportedly intended to ask the country for assistance in increasing oil production to cut gas costs.
But on October 5, just before the US midterm elections, OPEC+, led by Saudi Arabia, announced a significant reduction in production, infuriating Biden, who threatened to take action.
Regarding human rights, Saudi Arabia has always drawn criticism. Raif Badawi, a blogger and human rights activist, was sentenced to ten years in prison through March and received 50 public beatings for allegedly posting offensive material on his website.
