Saudi Arabia is pressuring a Florida man to renounce his US citizenship with sensitive tweets, family says

WASHINGTON (AP) – Saudi Arabia has forced a Florida retiree to try to renounce his American citizenship after jailing him for writings critical of the kingdom’s crown prince, according to the man’s son.

The retiree, Saad Almadi, 74, is one of at least four Saudi-American citizens who accuse the government of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of pressuring them to renounce their American citizenship, the US-based Middle East human rights group said. .

The alleged tactic by a key US partner, which has not been reported before, follows similar efforts to silence minor criticism, including the threat of arrest and a ban similar to the one that led Almadi to return to the US after being released after more than a year in a Saudi prison.

“There are Saudi officials who come to the US for a medical examination, so why can’t an American citizen return home because of his health?” Ibrahim Almadi said about his father.

“It’s all because we don’t want to offend the feelings of our partners,” he said in an interview he had in Washington. “If it was Russia, Iran or North Korea, he would have been arrested months ago.”

The Saudi embassy in Washington acknowledged receiving a request for comment on the allegations but did not otherwise respond. The Saudi government does not recognize dual citizenship. It has consistently rejected criticism of its actions, saying they are part of a decades-long campaign against corruption, terrorism and other security threats.

The plight of the elder Almadi and others may complicate U.S. efforts to turn the page on tensions stemming from the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

President Joe Biden in his 2020 campaign vowed to extradite members of the Saudi royal family after US intelligence officials concluded that the crown prince authorized the killing of a US-based journalist inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. The prince denied that he was involved.

But once in office and faced with rising gas prices that have caused lasting damage to support for Democrats, Biden has scaled back his criticism. During his visit to Saudi Arabia in 2022, the president had an awkward fist fight with Prince Mohammed.

Saudi-US relations are expected to warm under President-elect Donald Trump, whose real estate empire and family have extensive business ties with the world’s top oil trader.

A retired project manager who immigrated to the US in the 1970s, Almadi was arrested in Saudi Arabia in 2021, when he arrived on a planned two-week trip to see family. Saudi officials confronted him about tweets he had posted in the past few years in the US, including one about the assassination of Khashoggi and another about the prince’s consolidation of power.

Almadi was immediately sentenced to more than 19 years in prison on terrorism-related charges stemming from Twitter. Saudi Arabia released him after more than a year but prevented him from returning to his home in Boca Raton, near Miami.

Months after his release, Almadi received alarming phone calls from men his son said were operatives of the dreaded intelligence police, whose job it is to eliminate threats to the state’s rulers. Then in November of last year, they summoned Almadi to a village in Riyadh, where he was promised that the exit ban would be lifted if he renounced his American citizenship, his son said.

Feeling helpless, Almadi signed the document and followed instructions to try to return his American passport to the American Embassy, ​​his son said.

By law, Americans who want to revoke their citizenship must follow a lengthy process, and US officials must consider their actions voluntary. That was not the case in Almadi’s case, the State Department said, adding that he is still a US citizen and receiving diplomatic support.

“The department will continue to advocate for Mr. Almadi and the Saudi government and hopes that he will soon be able to reunite with his family in the United States,” said a spokesperson for the agency.

Abdullah Alaoudh, executive director of the Middle East Democracy Center, a Washington-based human rights group, said he knew of three other US-Saudi citizens who reported being forced to renounce their US citizenship. He said they are not activists or critical of the Saudi government.

Alaoudh said that Almadi’s case looks very bad: “They say they forced him.”

The group wrote to the Biden administration in December asking them to make a final proposal for the “immediate and unconditional release” of Americans, US citizens and their close relatives who are imprisoned in Saudi Arabia or banned from traveling in what activists say is an attempt to silence them.

Among those barred from leaving is Aziza al-Yousef, a US green card holder and retired professor who was among several activists arrested in 2018 — and later released — for peaceful protests and calls for women to drive in the kingdom.

It is unclear how Trump’s leadership will influence the handling of such cases, but his relationship with Saudi leaders is deepening.

The Trump Organization last month unveiled plans for a luxury high-rise building in the coastal city of Jeddah. And a private company controlled by Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser Jared Kushner has received a $2 billion investment from a sovereign wealth fund controlled by the crown prince.

Two weeks after the US election, Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk were seen sitting next to the head of the wealth fund at the UFC fight at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Saudi Arabia is the most coveted prize in US efforts to get Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords – a symbol of foreign policy success during Trump’s first presidency – and end the US ally’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

The ban on the exit of Almadi in Saudi Arabia, and similar practices against two nations by China, are aimed less at extracting foreign policy concessions from the US than at unjustified arrests by enemies such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela. But they can damage the relationship.

“From a policy perspective, it’s very complicated for the US to act when an ally is involved,” said Mickey Bergman, CEO of Global Reach, which works to secure the release of Americans detained abroad.

That means nothing to Almadi’s son. In March, he emailed several State Department officials, including the ambassador his father met in Riyadh, complaining about what he saw as a lack of American action to protect his father’s freedom.

“We cannot continue to wait while the ship sinks,” he wrote in an email, which he provided to the Associated Press.

He decided to go public after spending his fourth New Year separated from his father.

“Words can’t describe it,” said the younger Almadi, who quit his finance career and moved to Washington to represent his father. “I used to focus on improving my life, I was only 28 years old. But now all I can think about is what I should do, how I should do it, what I will say, what I can say, in order to get my father’s release.”

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Goodman reported from Miami. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.