The State Department has so far declined to label him ‘wrongfully detained’ — a designation that would direct additional government resources to his case.
The Saudi government increased the prison sentence of a U.S. citizen who was jailed in Saudi Arabia over his Twitter activity, the New York Post reported this week.
Saad Almadi was first arrested in fall 2021, when he visited family in Saudi Arabia, over a series of tweets he sent that were critical of the regime. A Saudi counterterrorism court sentenced him in October 2022 to a 16-year prison term with an additional 16-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.
Following an attempted appeal, Almadi’s sentence was upped to 19 years, the State Department told his family this week, according to the Post. His son, Ibrahim Almadi, called the sentence “not a slap in the face, it’s a middle finger” to the U.S. government for requesting the appeal. After Almadi requested the State Department’s help, he was tortured in jail, according to the Washington Post.
Almadi’s case has reportedly been discussed at the White House, though the State Department has so far declined to label him “wrongfully detained” — a designation that would direct additional governmental resources to his case.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle sounded off on the situation in comments to the New York Post.
Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) said that while President Biden promised to turn Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman into a pariah, “He hasn’t followed through,” adding that the failure to label Almadi’s case “wrongfully detained” is “atrocious.”
Representative Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), meanwhile, told the newspaper that the Saudi government’s treatment of Almadi undermines MBS’s attempts to show the world that Saudi Arabia is a more westernized country. “I would hope that the crown prince and folks would look at that and see that that’s just something they shouldn’t be doing,” he said.
Ibrahim Almadi, in his interview with the New York Post, elaborated on the administration’s deliberations, saying that while some State Department officials quietly support the wrongful-detention designation, Secretary of State Antony Blinken needs to assign it himself.
He cited the case of WNBA star Brittany Griner — whom State labeled as wrongfully detained before she was freed in a prisoner swap with Russia — as an example of how the label is effective. “Using a carrot doesn’t work with MBS,” he said. “He only works with a stick.”
Irahim Almadi also spoke to the trade-offs between standing up for his father and maintaining a strategic relationship with Riyadh. He directed that message to Biden: “We can protect our interests in that region and we can protect our senior American citizen taxpayer too. My father needs to be declared wrongfully detained and released from prison — or otherwise his blood will be on your hands.”