Saudi Arabia releases 72-yr-old US national jailed for tweets critical of kingdom

Saudi authorities have released a US citizen who was sentenced to 19 years in prison last year, the detainee's son said on Tuesday.

Saad Ibrahim Almadi, a 72-year-old who holds both Saudi and US passports, was arrested last November over tweets that were critical of the war in Yemen, controversial demolition work in Mecca, and the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, among other things.

He had been sentenced to 19 years in prison.

"All charges have been dropped but we have to fight the travel ban now," his son, Ibrahim Almadi, told Reuters news agency. 

Neither Saudi nor US officials confirmed the family's reports.

Straining relations

Almadi is a US citizen of Saudi origin. He had been living in retirement in Florida, but was arrested by Saudi authorities after he returned to Riyadh last year.

The arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Almadi risked further tensions between Washington and Riyadh, two longtime allies that have been at odds over oil output cuts and human rights issues in recent years.

The US State Department said last year it had "consistently and intensively raised our concerns regarding the case at senior levels of the Saudi government" and that "exercising freedom of expression should never be criminalized."

Saudis jailed for critical tweets

Abdullah Alaoudh, Saudi director at the US-based group Freedom Initiative, said Almadi "should have never spent a day behind bars for innocuous tweets."

However, just last week, Saudi state television showed prisoners who had been sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for posting critical tweets. They are the latest in a long list of political prisoners jailed by the conservative kingdom.

"There are far too many people in detention in Saudi Arabia who do not have the benefits of US citizenship to draw attention to their cases," Alaoudh said.

"Almadi's release shows that strategic pressure works, and US officials should continue to press for release of prisoners and lifting of travel bans."