WASHINGTON — A Saudi appeals court has increased the prison sentence of a US citizen for critical tweets from 16 years to 19 years in a “middle finger” to President Biden, the jailed man’s son tells The Post.
The State Department told Ibrahim Almadi about the revised Saudi penalty Wednesday — months after the White House publicly condemned his father, Saad Almadi’s, treatment.
“It’s not a slap in the face, it’s a middle finger,” Ibrahim told The Post, noting that his 72-year-old father “lost more than 80 pounds” since his arrest in November 2021 on charges linked to more than a dozen tweets mildly critical of the Saudi government.
“When the US asked for an appeal, they said, ‘Here you go, 19 years!’” his son exclaimed.
Saad Almadi, a retired engineer, lived in the U.S. since the 1970s and is a naturalized American citizen. He was arrested while returning to his homeland to sell family property.
Since being jailed, Almadi has been kept in inhumane conditions without a bed or chair — sometimes housed alongside dangerous suspected terrorists, his son said.
Almadi’s case has come up repeatedly at White House briefings, though Biden has not personally commented on it.
“The Saudi government understands the priority we attach to resolving this matter. Exercising the freedom of expression should never be criminalized,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Oct. 19.
A week later, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said: “We respect and understand and sympathize with the anguish [of Almadi’s family]. We continue to work on these cases all around the world, as much as we can.”
But the State Department has refused to officially designate Almadi as “wrongfully detained” — a bureaucratic term used to increase pressure on world leaders.
The harsh resentencing sparked fresh bipartisan scorn of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s government. Bin Salman, widely known by his initials MBS, is Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler and has waged a robust crackdown on dissent, including the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Conservative Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, noted Saudi attempts, led by MBS, to project a “more and more westernized” image of the country.
“I would hope that the crown prince and folks would look at that and see that that’s just something they shouldn’t be doing,” Jackson told The Post.
“We don’t do that here, obviously, and we don’t want to see that happen to folks in other parts of the world as well. We want everybody to have free speech everywhere,” added Jackson, a former physician to Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Left-wing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who was removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee by Republicans last week due to her outspoken criticism of Israel, told The Post that Biden should do more to win Almadi’s release.
“It is atrocious that the sensitivities of the royal family and the regime have led to severe limitations and crackdowns on basic civil liberties like the freedom of speech,” Omar said.
Biden “promised to make MBS a pariah and he hasn’t followed through and I’ve pushed the administration, Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken and others, to take a hard line on some of these gross human rights violations,” Omar said.
Omar said she shares Ibrahim Almadi’s frustration with the State Department’s decision not to declare his father “wrongfully detained.”
“I think that it’s atrocious and unbecoming, I would say, of an administration, of a country, that stands for the freedom of speech, that has it enshrined in its Constitution, that stands for upholding human rights. It’s atrocious,” she said.
Almadi said some State Department officials privately agreed that his father should be declared wrongfully detained, but whispered that it’s a decision that must be made by Blinken.
“The only way for my father to get out is through ‘wrongful detention’ … that’s how [WNBA star] Brittney Griner got out [of Russia]…. that’s what works with dictators,” Ibrahim Almadi said. “Using a carrot doesn’t work with MBS, he only works with a stick.”
The younger Almadi previously accused Biden of “selling” his dad for oil after the president failed to publicly press the crown prince on the case during a July meeting — and suggested Trump already would have won his release.
“I want to see [Biden] give some recognition to my father,” Ibrahim said.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told The Post, “President Trump was the most successful president in history in bringing home Americans detained overseas and reuniting them with their families. Contrast that with the failures of Joe Biden who could care less about Americans detained overseas.”
The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new sentence, nor did the Saudi embassy in Washington.
“We are at a time when we sweep our American values and human rights values under the carpet … because we care about interest in our oil,” Ibrahim told The Post.
“I think the United States, the strongest country in the world, can protect our interests in the region and release my father. We can do both.”
Asked if he had a message for Biden, Almadi said: “Mr. President, we can protect our interests in that region and we can protect our senior American citizen taxpayer too. My father needs to be declared wrongfully detained and released from prison — or otherwise his blood will be on your hands.”
The Almadi case has been marred by missteps. The State Department admitted it failed to send someone to the Oct. 3 sentencing hearing where he received the initial 16-year, 3-month penalty, which was linked to 14 tweets and to his alleged failure to inform on his son’s similar online commentary.
Saad Almadi’s offending tweets included remarks that Saudi officials were unable to protect national borders from rocket fire by Iran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen. He also said he agreed with naming a DC street after Khashoggi.