Saudi Arabia hands 16-year jail term to elderly US citizen over critical tweets

The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old American citizen to 16 years in prison over his tweets criticizing the ultra-conservative regime in Riyadh, with the son of the elderly critic saying his father has been “tortured” in jail.

In a report published late on Monday, the Washington Post said Saudi Arabia in early October handed a 16-year prison sentence to Saudi-American Saad Ibrahim Almadi over 14 anti-Riyadh tweets he had posted on his account while inside the US.

Almadi was charged with "harboring a terrorist ideology, trying to destabilize the Kingdom, as well as supporting and funding terrorism," the Post reported, adding that he was also handed a 16-year travel ban.

The 72-year-old project manager from Florida was detained at Riyadh airport last year when he traveled to Saudi Arabia to visit his family.

A spokesperson for the US State Department had confirmed Almadi's detention in Saudi Arabia at the time but declined to identify the charge. The spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Washington had been following Almadi's case closely since his arrest.

"Since that happened, we have consistently and intensively raised our concerns regarding this case at senior levels several times in both Washington and Riyadh and will continue to do so. The Saudi government understands the priority we attach to resolving this matter," the spokesperson said.

Ibrahim Almadi, the son of the American citizen, told the Washington Post that the US State Department had been both "neglectful and negligent" over the case.

Ibrahim said no one from the US embassy in Saudi Arabia had visited his father until six months after his arrest in November last year and that no US officials had attended his sentencing despite having notified them of the hearing.

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Ibrahim told the US daily that the State Department had told him not to speak publicly about his father's case, but that he no longer believed that staying quiet would secure his father’s freedom.

During a meeting between embassy officials and his father in May, my father declined to ask Washington to intervene as Saudi jailers threaten to torture prisoners who involve foreign governments in their cases, Ibrahim added.

In a second meeting in August, Ibrahim said his father called for the State Department’s assistance and was consequently tortured.

“Almadi has been tortured in prison, forced to live in squalor and confined with actual terrorists — all while his family was threatened by the Saudi government that they would lose everything if they didn’t keep quiet,” the Post quoted Ibrahim as saying.

Ever since bin Salman became Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader in 2017, the kingdom has ramped up arrests of activists, bloggers, intellectuals, and others perceived as political opponents, showing almost zero tolerance for dissent even in the face of international condemnations.

Muslim scholars have been executed and women’s rights campaigners have been put behind bars and tortured as freedoms of expression, association, and belief continue to be denied.

Over the past years, Riyadh has also redefined its anti-terrorism laws to target activism.

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