DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — 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.
