Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Opinion ǀ Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

By Josh Rogin
Columnist
October 17, 2022 at 5:06 p.m. EDT

The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case.

Many dictatorships unjustly imprison Americans. But while the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure the release of high-profile Americans from Russia, Venezuela and Iran, it has been less public and less successful in securing the release of U.S. citizens held in Saudi Arabia. In fact, despite that Saudi Arabia is supposedly a U.S. ally, the Saudi government under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is dealing with its U.S.-citizen critics more harshly than ever. The latest and most egregious example concerns Saudi American Saad Ibrahim Almadi.

Almadi is not a dissident or an activist; he is simply a project manager from Florida who decided to practice his right to free speech inside the United States. But last November, when he traveled to Riyadh to visit family, he was detained regarding 14 tweets posted on his account over the previous seven years. One of the cited tweets referenced Jamal Khashoggi, the Post contributing columnist who was murdered by Saudi agents in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Other tweets criticized the Saudi government’s policies and the corruption in the Saudi system.

“He had what I would call mild opinions about the government,” his son Ibrahim told me. “They took him from the airport.”

Almadi was charged with harboring a terrorist ideology, trying to destabilize the kingdom, as well as supporting and funding terrorism. He was also charged with failing to report terrorism, a charge related to tweets Ibrahim sent on a separate account.

-snip-

Read more: https://wapo.st/3s3Cupm

Original WaPo link (paywall): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/almadi-sentenced-tweets-saudi-arabia/

[Tetrachloride]

1. The Saudi Arabian government doesn't know

what Enterprise Bingo is.

[onecaliberal]

2. You mean the country most guilty for 9/11 and for killing an American journalist

Is bad…. 🤷?♀️

[JT45242]

3. Just label Saudi a state sponsor of terrorism

Refer MBS to the international court as well.

I am so sick of this shit.

Squash this country and its scumbag leaders like the infected insects they are.

No more weapons. No more technology. No more food supplues.

Impose sanctions like we did Iran and Iraq. The Saudi are at least as much our enemies as Iran and Iraq were.

[GreenWave]

4. Treat the Prince like they did Noriega.