The United States confirmed on Tuesday that an American had been sentenced to prison in Saudi Arabia for tweets critical of the kingdom and claimed to have raised his case with the Saudis, a case which adds to the tensions between these two countries allies.
According to washington postSaad Ibrahim Almadi, a 72-year-old American citizen of Saudi origin, was tortured and then sentenced in early October to 16 years in prison, a sentence to be followed for the next 16 years by a ban on leaving the territory.
His son confirmed these details to AFP.
The State Department said Washington spoke to the Saudis about his case as early as December and again as recently as Monday.
“We have consistently and intensely raised our concerns about this matter at a high level within the Saudi government, through communication channels in Riyadh and Washington,” said the spokesman for the Department of Saudi Arabia. State, Vedant Patel, to the press.
“The exercise of freedom of expression should never be criminalized,” he continued.
The State Department said no U.S. representative was present for the sentencing on Oct. 3, as Saudi authorities set another date for the hearing before moving it forward.
“We only heard from the Saudi government after the October 3 date,” Patel said, without further details.
Charged with supporting terrorism
However, in the washington postMr. Almadi’s son claimed to have alerted US authorities about the hearing.
According to the daily, Mr. Almadi, who lives in Florida and had traveled to Saudi Arabia to visit his family, was arrested in November at the airport because of 14 tweets written over the past seven years.
The offending tweets contained opinions about corruption in Saudi Arabia and the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the dismembered Saudi journalist inside the compound of his country’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018, according to Mr Almadi’s son.
He was notably charged with supporting terrorism and attempting to destabilize the kingdom, according to the same source.
Before being elected, President Joe Biden had pledged to treat Arabia as a “pariah” because of the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.
But this summer, he paid a visit to the country during which he met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A move highly criticized by human rights defenders, according to whom Washington has ceded ground for economic reasons in particular, oil in mind.