British family speaks out over nine-year ordeal after husband is abducted by Saudi Arabia

A British woman has spoken out for the first time about the alleged abduction, torture and coercion of her husband at the hands of Saudi authorities, after nine years of “failed” quiet diplomacy. The businessman Rami Naimi was first abducted in Dubai in 2017 on his return from a trip to Australia with his father. After being tortured, he was released the following year.

The father of three, who is the son of Ali Al-Naimi, a former Saudi oil minister and head of the state oil company Aramco, was detained again in 2022 and held for two years. Last year he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment after a secret trial. He was initially detained alongside 400 of the kingdom’s most powerful people in an infamous round-up at the the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, which became the biggest and most contentious purge in the modern kingdom’s history.

Speaking out for the first time after years of what they described as a failed diplomatic process, his family has alleged abduction, disappearance, torture and coercion at the hands of Saudi authorities. Naimi now faces a second trial for allegedly following certain accounts on X critical of Saudi Arabia and for attempting to leave the country without permission – both of which he denies. Lozi, currently fighting cancer, fought back tears as she said she had been encouraged to keep silent since 2017 to help secure his release.

His family claim he was abducted in Dubai in 2017 returning home from a book tour trip from Australia with his father. They say he was blindfolded and forcibly taken by car to Abu Dhabi and then by private jet to Saudi Arabia. He was surprised to find himself with the others who had been rounded up, his family said, as he is not a journalist, activist or politician.

His abduction in 2017 came as the kingdom’s elite were detained at a five-star hotel in Riyadh during a purge in which princes, tycoons and ministers were stripped of their fortunes. Accounts later surfaced detailing torture and coercion, and the event preceded the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose assassination at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 sparked revulsion around the world. Naimi was held at the hotel and tortured, electrocuted, waterboarded and psychologically abused for three months, his family said.

He was told, falsely, that his father was being tortured next door. He was released in January 2018 after signing a “settlement agreement”. He was subsequently forced to sign a document pledging to surrender 5bn Saudi riyals, later “discounted” to 1bn riyals (£200m) – which the family says neither he or they possess.