Walid Fitaihi

As of March 2019, Fitaihi had not been officially charged with any crimes. He was transferred to the al-Hair prison for longer-term incarceration. His family tried to use public pressure on the Saudi government and US President Trump to secure his release from prison.

Fataihi was initially arrested in September 2017 but was released under a travel ban pledge. He was arrested again in November 2017. He was taken from his home in Jeddah in the middle of the night and moved to the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh where the crown prince Mohammad bin Salman was keeping at least 200 wealthy Saudis in detention as an alleged crackdown on corruption, during the 2017–19 Saudi Arabian purge.

Walid Fitaihi (Arabic: وليد فتيحي ‎) (born 24 September 1964) is a Saudi-American physician and also a motivational speaker on Saudi television. In November 2017, a decade after returning from study and work in the United States, Fitaihi was arrested by Saudi authorities and taken to the Ritz Carlton hotel as part of the 2017–19 Saudi Arabian purge, together with many prominent prisoners. He was later moved to al-Hair prison, south of the capital.

Walid Fitaihi was born on 24 September 1964 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He also holds United States citizenship. Massachusetts state records shows he had registered to vote when he was living in Cambridge. He took his undergraduate and medical degrees from George Washington University and a master's in public health from Harvard University. His family decided to build a private hospital in Jeddah in 2006. He returned to Saudi Arabia to help his family to found the private hospital in 2006. He later became the CEO of the International Medical Center, which was built by his family, and travelled often to the US for business.