U.S. officials and a U.S. advocacy group announced Tuesday that Saudi Arabia has detained an American lady who has been involved in a years-long battle to take her small daughter back out of the kingdom over the objections of her Saudi ex-husband.
According to the Washington-based Freedom Initiative, Carly Morris was summoned to a police station in the north-central city of Buraidah on Monday and has not been released by Saudi officials. The group advocates for Middle Eastern detainees it deems to be unlawfully detained.
U.S. officials confirmed that Saudi authorities have detained Morris, whose efforts to leave the kingdom with her 8-year-old daughter have been hampered by the kingdom’s stringent male guardianship laws. Morris had discussed her circumstances with media and on Twitter in recent months.
“Our embassy in Riyadh is highly involved in this case, and they are closely monitoring the situation,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday in Washington.
The Saudi Embassy in Washington and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond quickly to a request for comment through email.
Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has aggressively targeted U.S. citizens and Saudis living in the West whom the regime views as rivals or critics.
In August, a Saudi court sentenced Saad al Madi, a 72-year-old Saudi-American residing in Florida, to 16 years in prison for critical tweets he had made over the years.
Morris came to Saudi Arabia in 2019 for what was expected to be a brief visit so that her daughter, who is also an American citizen, may meet the family of the Saudi father, according to Bethany Al-Haidari, the Saudi Arabia case manager for Freedom Initiative.
The code of male guardianship in Saudi Arabia served to keep the daughter within the country. According to reports, Saudi Arabia placed Morris herself under one of its widespread travel bans, preventing her from leaving the country.
Al Haidari stated that Morris recently tweeted warnings to other ladies with children overseas regarding Saudi Arabia.
As a candidate, President Biden threatened to isolate Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, for human rights violations. The Biden administration now seeks to persuade the monarchy to pump more oil for the global market, and has moved to mend fences between the two vital partners.
The incarceration of the American woman was “yet another indication” that Saudi Arabia does not regard the United States as an ally, according to Allison McManus, director of research for the Freedom Initiative.