WASHINGTON: A 72-year-old American imprisoned more than a year in Saudi Arabia over tweets critical of the Saudi crown prince was back with family members in Riyadh on Tuesday, but it wasn’t clear whether the kingdom will drop a travel ban to allow him to return home to Florida.
Neither Saudi nor U.S. officials by early Tuesday had spoken publicly after Saudi Arabia on Monday released Saad Almadi, a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen and, until his arrest, a retiree living in Florida.
Almadi is now at home with family members who live in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, said his son, Ibrahim Almadi. Saudi officials dropped all charges against the elder Almadi, Ibrahim Almadi and advocates familiar with the case said. But it was not immediately clear whether the kingdom would maintain a travel ban it had imposed to follow the prison sentence.
The Florida man’s imprisonment over tweets had been one of several alleged human rights abuses that had soured relations between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and President Joe Biden. That included Saudi officials’ killing of a U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, and prison sentences and travel bans that Saudi Arabia under the crown prince’s tenure has given Saudi rights advocates and perceived rivals and critics of the powerful crown prince. –Agencies
