Saudi Arabia allows US citizen Saad Almadi to return home
Saudi Arabia has allowed a Saudi-US citizen subject to an exit ban to return home after a meeting between Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and US President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
The kingdom announced that 75-year-old retired engineer Saad Almadi would be allowed to leave Saudi Arabia five months ahead of the lifting of his travel ban.
Almadi was arrested in 2021 upon arrival in Riyadh and sentenced to 19 years in prison for allegedly writing social media posts critical of the government.
He was released in 2023 and the charges against him dropped, but he remained in the kingdom under a 30-year travel ban, unable to return home for four years.
“Our family is overjoyed that, after four long years, our father, Saad Almadi, is finally on his way home to the United States!” his relatives said in a statement.
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Almadi's son Ibrahim lauded the Trump administration’s “tireless efforts” in securing his father’s return. He later posted on X confirming that Almadi was airborne and on his way back to the US.
"I'm still trying to process it. I can't believe our nightmare is coming to an end," Ibrahim said in an interview with CNN.
Asked whether his father’s release was connected to the state visit, Ibrahim said that without Trump, "[his] father wouldn’t be released", adding that he was "quite thankful for the Trump administration and the Department of State".
Almadi was found guilty of trying to destabilise the kingdom and supporting and funding terrorism for allegedly writing 14 media posts.
According to the BBC, the tweets consisted of criticism of demolitions of sections of the cities of Mecca and Jeddah, concerns over poverty, and a reference to murdered Middle East Eye and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The crown prince’s visit was the first since Khashoggi’s killing by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018.
Trump, who delivered a speech on Tuesday touting US-Saudi ties and a slew of arms sales and investment deals, defended the crown prince. He brushed off questions from reporters about the murder, saying that “things happen”.
Trump also directly contradicted a 2021 US intelligence assessment which found that the Saudi crown prince approved the capture or killing of the prominent journalist, claiming that his guest “knew nothing” about the murder.
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