Saudi Arabian authorities detained an American citizen on Monday who has been struggling for several years to return to the US with her daughter. Her ex-husband does not want her to take the child. She was released on Wednesday and reunited with her daughter, but is unable to leave the country. 

Carly Morris, 34, was summoned by Saudi authorities to a police station in the city of Buraidah on Monday. A US-based advocacy group called Freedom Initiative, was fighting for her release, and advocates for the release of people that have been wrongfully detained in various Middle Eastern countries.

The Human Rights Foundation brought her situation to the public eye in August, calling on the Saudi Arabian government to allow her and her daughter to return home. Morris’ posts on Twitter have inflamed the authorities and have made matters worse.

The 34-year-old American woman planned her trip to Saudi Arabia in 2019. She told her family that she would be traveling there for a short period to enable her eight-year-old daughter to meet her father’s side of the family.

What was meant to be a short trip turned out to be a year’s-long struggle to return to the US and get her daughter out of Saudi Arabia, fueled primarily by her ex-husband’s objections. Her efforts to get out have been even more difficult because of the Kingdom’s strict laws on male guardianship.

The country’s male guardianship laws prevent Morris from leaving the Kingdom with her daughter, and authorities placed her under a travel ban, preventing her from leaving the country.

An official Saudi document, which lists Morris as an American citizen, states that she was detained after she responded to a summons to the prosecutor’s office. The summons alleged she was causing the destabilization of a public order. 

Morris was summoned on Monday after posting a lengthy message on Twitter warning other women who had children with Saudi men against visiting the Kingdom. Her post outlined what she had gone through since 2019, saying she and her daughter had been held at a hotel against their will. She said that they had faced social isolation for the three years they had been there.

Saudi Arabia has been increasingly cracking down on American citizens and Saudis who live outside the Kingdom over remarks or comments made on social media. According to the human rights activist group, Freedom Initiative, Morris is the third US citizen detained in Saudi Arabia.

Allison McManus, the Research Director for Freedom Initiative, said that the fact that three Americans were being held against their will by the Saudi Government was a sign that the Kingdom does not consider the US as an ally.

Previously, Saudi citizen Salma al-Shehab, 34, was arrested, convicted, and sentenced when she returned to Saudi Arabia after taking a short vacation while pursuing her PhD at Leeds University in the UK. She was sentenced for liking tweets and following a few Saudi critics while in the UK.

In another case, 72-year-old Saad Ibrahim Almadi, an American citizen, decided to visit his native country of Saudi Arabia. He was arrested and sentenced to 16 years for posting tweets criticizing the Saudi government.