DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A British Bank of America analyst has been sentenced to a decade in a Saudi Arabian prison apparently over a since-deleted social media post, according to his lawyer.
The family of Ahmed al-Doush believes the charges against him stemmed from a deleted 2018 tweet about Sudan that did not mention Saudi Arabia and his relationship with the son of a Saudi critic in exile, Amnesty International said in a statement Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia’s press office and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
He was sentenced Monday after being accused of violating terrorism and anti-cyber crime laws.
“The exact tweet is unknown,” Haydee Dijkstal, al-Doush’s international counsel, posted Tuesday on X, the platform formerly called Twitter. “His trial and detention involved fair trial & due process violations. The UK Gov should stand firmly against a British national’s imprisonment for allegedly exercising his free speech rights.”
The 41-year-old British national was arrested in August at a Riyadh airport while trying to travel to Manchester, England, with his family. His wife has since given birth to their fourth child.
“I rarely speak to my husband, but in the few snatched conversations we have managed, it is clear that Ahmed is struggling,” al-Doush’s wife, Amaher Nour, said ahead of her husband’s sentencing, citing his thyroid problems and distress after nine months of being jailed.
The developments came while U.S. President Donald Trump was in Saudi Arabia, where several dual nationals with Western ties and Saudis have been detained in recent years over social media posts that could be viewed as critical to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler.