The charges against Saad, which were all dropped as part of his release, related to tweets he posted while in the United States that were critical of the Saudi government, some dating back to 2015, Ibrahim said.
“Saudi officials just [dug], and they found some tweets against MBS, and they just used that against him as evidence of terrorism,” Ibrahim said, referring to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is often called by his initials.
In one of the tweets, Saad saluted the life of slain Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi and suggested that a street should be named his honor, Ibrahim said. In another, he suggested that all power in Saudi Arabia was concentrated in Mohammed’s hands, Ibrahim said.
Neither the State Department nor Saudi officials have commented publicly on Almadi’s release. An official at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh declined to comment Tuesday.
Almadi is staying with family in Saudi Arabia and is unable to flyto the United States because of a travel ban that prohibits him from leaving Saudi Arabia, his son said.
Ibrahim, who said he spoke to his father on the phone briefly after his release, said Saad had lost 80 pounds after 16 months in prison, where he said his father did not receive adequate medical attention.
“It’s quite disgusting,” said Ibrahim, who welcomed his father’s release but said he was disappointed that he was being prevented from returning home to the United States.
“We’re not political dissidents. We’re proud Americans,” he said. “We have nothing to do with politics. We only want to live freely and happily in the United States.”
“I went to Knoxville Catholic High School,” he said. “What kind of terrorist sends their kid to a Catholic school?”
“We want him back. The fight is not done yet,” Ibrahim said of his father. “He needs medical attention, and he wants to see his family in the States.”
Almadi’s release comes as the Biden administration faces continued pressure over its relations with Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East despite its poor record on human rights and political freedoms.
A U.S. intelligence report released in February 2021 directly linked the Saudi crown prince to Khashoggi’s 2018 killing, concluding that he had approved the operation. According to investigators, a team of Saudi agents killed Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate before dismembering his body.
In July, President Biden defended his decision to meet with Mohammed in Saudi Arabia during his first presidential trip to the Middle East, having promised to make the kingdom a “pariah” while campaigning for the White House.
Writing in The Post, Biden acknowledged reservations over Riyadh’s poor human rights record and said: “My administration has made clear that the United States will not tolerate extraterritorial threats and harassment against dissidents and activists by any government. We also advocated for American citizens who had been wrongfully detained in Saudi Arabia long before I took office.”
The Freedom Initiative, an organization that advocates for the release of prisoners wrongfully detained in the Middle East and North Africa, welcomed Almadi’s release in a statement and called on Washington to put greater pressure on countries that receive U.S. military support to improve their human rights records.
“We are relieved that Saad Almadi has been released, but he should have never spent a day behind bars for innocuous tweets,” the organization’s Saudi director, Abdullah Alaoudh, said in a statement. “There are far too many people in Saudi detention who don’t have the benefit of U.S. citizenship to draw attention to their cases.”
According to a Freedom Initiative tally, at least six U.S. citizens are being detained by Saudi officials or subjected to “politically motivated travel bans” preventing them from leaving the Kingdom.
Miriam Berger contributed to this report.
Leo Sands
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