Humanitarian aid worker (Saudi Red Crescent); satirical anonymous Twitter user
"They took my brother because he made people laugh at power."HuMENA Editorial
Saudi Red Crescent aid worker forcibly disappeared in March 2018 over an anonymous satirical Twitter account. Sentenced to 20 years in prison in April 2021 followed by a 20-year travel ban; sentence upheld on appeal in October 2021.
Abdulrahman al-Sadhan is a humanitarian aid worker who studied economics in the United States before returning to Riyadh to take a position with the Saudi Arabian Red Crescent Society. Outside his day job he ran two anonymous accounts on Twitter that drew large followings for their dry, satirical commentary on Saudi public life — religious bureaucracy, official corruption, and the intersection of state and clerical power. His identity was never publicly known.
On 12 March 2018, agents of the Presidency of State Security entered Red Crescent offices in Riyadh and took him into custody without a warrant. He was driven to an unknown location and held incommunicado for almost two years. He was reportedly tortured, including by beating, electric shock and prolonged solitary confinement. His family in the United States went 22 months without any contact before he was finally permitted a single brief phone call on 12 February 2020.
His trial was held behind closed doors at the Specialised Criminal Court. He had no meaningful access to a lawyer. In April 2021 the court sentenced him to twenty years in prison followed by a twenty-year travel ban, on charges of "preparing, storing and sending material prejudicial to public order, religious values and public morals" — that is, his tweets. The verdict was upheld on appeal by the Specialised Criminal Court's appellate chamber on 5 October 2021, drawing a rare public rebuke from the United States.
He continues to serve his sentence in al-Ha'ir prison south of Riyadh. He is now 36 years old; he has been detained since he was 27. Communication with his family in the United States is intermittent and routed through monitored channels. His sister Areej al-Sadhan, now based in San Francisco, has become the public face of the campaign for his release. No part of his sentence has been commuted, and the underlying tweets remain the only evidence ever produced.
This case file was compiled by HuMENA's Saudi Arabia research team from primary documentation, public filings, family-supplied legal documents, and confidential partner reporting. Editorial responsibility rests with the HuMENA Editorial Board. Where dates or facts are uncertain, the record errs on the side of the source material and notes uncertainty in the live archive at humena.org.
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