WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia has lifted its travel ban on Saad Almadi, a US-Saudi citizen who has been held over tweets that were critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his family said in a statement.
Almadi’s release coincides with the Saudi crown prince’s first visit to Washington since 2018.
“Our family is overjoyed that, after four long years, our father, Saad Almadi, is finally on his way home to the United States!” the Almadi family said in a statement Wednesday.
Almadi, 75, is a retired project manager from Florida and was arrested during a visit to Saudi Arabia in 2021. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison over tweets he wrote in the United States, some of which were critical of Crown Prince Mohammed’s leadership. He was released after just 16 months in prison but was unable to leave the country.
Trump told reporters Tuesday that the Saudi crown prince has done an “incredible” job on human rights and dismissed questions over Jamal Khashoggi, whose 2018 murder the US intelligence community determined was ordered by Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader.
Though he’s dramatically expanded social freedoms in the oil-rich kingdom, the 40-year-old Saudi crown prince has tightened political repression by jailing his critics. Rights groups say imposing travel bans, rather than prison time, is a way of signaling progress while still maintaining control over critical voices.
Under the Biden administration, Saudi Arabia lifted the travel bans on dual citizens Salah al-Haidar and Bader al-Ibrahim. They were among a group of writers, activists and intellectuals who were rounded up in April 2019 as part of a crackdown on dissent overseen by the crown prince.
This is developing story has been updated.
