Son of US citizen detained in Saudi Arabia says State Department neglected father’s case

The son of a U.S. citizen being detained and allegedly tortured by Saudi Arabia over tweets he posted criticizing the kingdom told The Washington Post that the State Department neglected his father’s case.

In an opinion piece published by columnist Josh Rogin, Saad Ibrahim Almadi’s son, Ibrahim, said nobody from the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia visited his father until six months after his arrest and no U.S. officials were present at his sentencing hearing earlier this month.

“I feel empty inside,” Almadi’s son told the Post. “I feel dead inside. I feel betrayed. He’s not only my father, he’s my best friend. He is everything to me.”

Ibrahim Almadi told the outlet that the Saudi government sentenced his father, 76, to 16 years in prison followed by a 16-year travel ban for tweets he posted while in the U.S that criticized the Saudi government. Almadi has also been tortured, his son said.

“He had what I would call mild opinions about the government,” Ibrahim Almadi told the Post. “They took him from the airport.”

Saudi officials sentenced Almadi during a hearing on Oct. 3. His son told the Post that he had communicated the date to the State Department but no one from the U.S. Embassy attended.

“I told the State Department his hearing was set for October 3 and they should attend,” Ibrahim Almadi told the Post. “Afterward, over the phone, they said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry we forgot to tell the embassy.’ I feel like they are just careless.”

The Post reported that a senior State Department official, whom it declined to name, confirmed that officials failed to tell the embassy in Riyadh about the hearing.

The Hill has reached out to the State Department and the Saudi Embassy in Washington for comment. Ibrahim Almadi could not be reached for comment.

Almadi traveled to Washington to ask officials to declare his father as being “wrongfully detained,” the Post reported. 

The secretary of State makes the determination based on the totality of the circumstances after considering 11 criteria passed by lawmakers. 

The designation would transfer Almadi’s case to Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

Officials have leveraged the designation for some foreign-held detainees like Brittney Griner, whom Russia arrested at an airport for illegal possession of cannabis and later sentenced to nine years in prison. Griner was detained as Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

But as opposed to the U.S.’s adversarial relationship with Russia, the U.S. has for years held a military alliance with Saudi Arabia. President Biden visited the country in what came to be a controversial trip in July.

Biden this month, however, has indicated he will reassess the U.S.-Saudi relationship after the country and its oil-exporting allies agreed to reduce production, likely boosting prices and aiding Russia in financing its war in Ukraine.