Father’s trial keeps American family stuck in Saudi Arabia

Doctor, who has dual citizenship, was arrested in 2017.

BEIRUT — Five months after Saudi Arabia released a doctor with dual Saudi American citizenship from jail, he and seven family members remain barred from leaving the kingdom while he stands trial on charges the United States contends are meritless, a son and a senior State Department official said.

Saudi authorities detained the doctor, Walid Fitaihi, during what they called an anti-corruption campaign in late 2017 and released him pending trial last summer. He has told confidantes Saudi jailers tortured him. Authorities have confiscated his family’s passports, leaving eight dual Saudi American citizens stuck in the kingdom, the son and the official said.

“My family’s freedoms have been taken,” the son, Ahmad Fitaihi, 27, said by phone from California.

While U.S. diplomats have worked to restore the rights of the doctor and his family, President Donald Trump has never spoken publicly of the case, leaving Fitaihi’s son wondering why his father has not received the same attention from the White House as other Americans detained abroad.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on Fitaihi’s status. Saudi officials have said the kingdom does not torture people.

Fitaihi, a Harvard-trained physician, was born in Saudi Arabia but became a U.S. citizen while living and working in the Boston area. He returned to the kingdom around 2006, where he opened a private hospital and became a motivational speaker.

He was arrested in November 2017 during a sweep of arrests Saudi officials described as an anti-corruption campaign. But while most of the hundreds of princes, former officials and businessmen who were arrested then and locked in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton were released within a few months, Fitaihi was transferred to prison and held for 21 months before he was released pending trial last July.

The senior State Department official said Fitaihi faces charges including obtaining U.S. citizenship without permission from the Saudi government and working with an organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamic organization that Saudi Arabia — but not the United States or other Western nations — considers a terrorist group.

The senior official said diplomats and other U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, had raised Fitaihi’s case with a range of Saudis, so far to no avail.

“We do not believe there is merit to the case,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under diplomatic protocols. He said the Saudis had presented no information that would justify Fitaihi’s incarceration or the travel ban facing him and other members of his family, which the official described as “sort of collective punishment.”

Fitaihi’s son said that his mother, Lana Angawi, was born in Texas and has U.S. citizenship, as do his six younger siblings. The family once traveled to the United States every year or so for vacation; Newport Beach, California, was a favorite spot.

Ahmad Fitaihi said a brother, Yusuf Fitaihi, 19, had planned to attend a U.S. university after high school; and a sister, Mariam Fitaihi, 24, had planned to move to Britain, where she earned a master’s degree, to get engaged.

But after their father’s arrest, security officers came to their home and seized their passports, barring them from leaving the kingdom and putting their lives on hold. Their father’s assets were also frozen, Ahmad Fitaihi said, further limiting their options.