British banking analyst jailed in Saudi Arabia for 10 years over 'unknown tweet'

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, 41, 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.

The father-of-four 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. “His trial and detention involved fair trial and due process violations." The lawyer said the U.K. government "should stand firmly against a British national’s imprisonment for allegedly exercising his free speech rights.”

The Saudi Arabian government did not respond to requests for comment.

“We are supporting a British man who is detained in Saudi Arabia and are in contact with his family and local authorities,” a spokesperson for the Foreign Office in London said in a statement.

Al-Doush, a British national, was arrested in August 2024 at a Riyadh airport where he was waiting for a flight to Manchester, England, with his family following a holiday. 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 detention.

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.

In 2021, a Saudi-American dual national was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison by Saudi Arabia on terrorism-related charges stemming from tweets.

Saad Almadi, now 75, was jailed in connection with tweets he had posted over the past several years in the U.S. He was released in 2023 but has been banned from leaving the kingdom.

On Wednesday, the kingdom’s foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud was asked during a press conference if Almadi's case had been discussed during Trump's trip.

“We obviously have robust conversations with our U.S. partners about a number of issues,” Prince Faisal said, without directly commenting on Almadi. He added that Saudi Arabia “will always, you know, welcome those conversations.”

Associated Press writer Baraa Anwer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report