Saudi Arabia has forced a Florida retiree to try to renounce his American citizenship after jailing him over social media posts critical of the kingdom’s crown prince, according to the man’s son. The retiree, 74-year-old Saad Almadi, is one of at least four dual Saudi-American nationals who accuse Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s government of pressuring them to give up their U.S. citizenship, a U.S.-based Middle East human rights group said. The alleged tactic by a key strategic partner of the U.S., which has not been previously reported, tracks with similar efforts to silence even mild criticism, including the threat of imprisonment and exit bans like the one that has kept Almadi from returning to the U.S. after being released from more than a year in a Saudi prison. “There are Saudi princes that come to the U.S. for routine medical checkups, so why can’t an American citizen return home for his health?” Ibrahim Almadi said of his father. “It’s all because we don’t want to upset our ally’s feelings,” he said in an interview from Washington. “If this were Russia, Iran or North Korea, he would’ve been declared wrongfully detained months ago.” The Saudi Embassy in Washington acknowledged receiving a request for comment on the allegations but did not otherwise respond. The Saudi government doesn’t recognize dual citizenship. It regularly rejects criticism of its actions, saying they are part of a multiyear crackdown on corruption, terrorism and other security threats. The plight of the elder Almadi and others could complicate U.S. efforts to turn the page on tensions arising from the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. President Joe Biden in his 2020 campaign vowed to make pariahs out of Saudi royals after U.S. intelligence officials concluded that the crown prince authorized the killing of the U.S.-based journalist inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The prince has denied any involvement. But once in office and confronted with a spike in gas prices that did lasting damage to support for Democrats, Biden softened his criticism. During a visit to Saudi Arabia in 2022, the president had an awkward fist bump with Prince Mohammed. Saudi-U.S. relations are expected to warm further under President-elect Donald Trump, whose real estate empire and family have extensive business dealings with the world’s top oil exporter. A retired project manager who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s, Almadi was arrested in Saudi Arabia in 2021, when he arrived on a planned two-week visit to see family. Saudi officials confronted him with tweets he had posted over the past several years in the U.S., including one about Khashoggi’s killing and another on the crown prince’s consolidation of power. Almadi was quickly sentenced to more than 19 years in prison on terrorism-related charges stemming from the tweets. Saudi Arabia freed him after more than a year but imposed an exit ban that keeps him from returning to his home in Boca Raton, near Miami. For months after his release, Almadi received menacing phone calls from men his son alleges were agents of the feared intelligence police, whose job it is to root out threats to the kingdom’s rulers. Then, last November, they summoned Almadi to a villa in Riyadh, where he was promised the exit ban would be lifted if he renounced his American citizenship, […]