Saudi Arabia lifts travel ban on US citizen Saad Almadi

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia has lifted its travel ban on Saad Almadi, a US-Saudi citizen who was held over tweets that were critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his family said in a statement.

Almadi’s release comes as the Saudi crown prince, once shunned in Washington over his country’s human rights record, met with President Donald Trump in his first visit to the United States 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!” his son Ibrahim Almadi said in a statement Wednesday. 

Ibrahim attributed his father’s release to the “tireless efforts” of the Trump administration, including the White House’s top counterterrorism official, Sebastian Gorka.

Almadi, 75, was arrested during a trip to see his family in Saudi Arabia in November 2021. The retired project manager from Florida was sentenced to 19 years in prison over 14 tweets he wrote in the United States that were critical of the Saudi government and the crown prince’s leadership. He was released after just 16 months in prison in March 2023, but was unable to leave the country. 

Almadi is set to arrive in Philadelphia on Thursday morning, where he will be welcomed by his son Ibrahim. 

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.  

At least two US-Saudi citizens remain under travel ban in Saudi Arabia, including Harvard-trained physician Walid Fitaihi, who was arrested in what the Saudi government said was a corruption crackdown. He was among hundreds of businessmen, Saudi royals and other critics who were detained at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh in 2017.

Al-Monitor is also aware of an elderly American citizen held under a travel ban whose family isn’t making his case public for fear of retaliation.

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 developing story has been updated since initial publication.