International Desk :
One of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent women’s rights activists was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison Monday .
A Saudi terrorism court sentenced Loujain Al-Hathloul despite international criticism of her detention and pressures to release her, local media reported.
State-linked Saudi news outlet Sabq reported on Monday that al-Hathloul had been found guilty by the court on charges including agitating for change, pursuing a foreign agenda and using the internet to harm public order.
Loujain Al-Hathloul, 31, rose to prominence for openly calling for women to be given the right to drive and for an end to Saudi Arabia’s restrictive male guardianship system that had long limited women’s freedom of movement. She was arrested along with several other female activists in May 2018, just weeks before the kingdom ended a decades-long ban on women driving.
Rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said that some of the women detained, including Al-Hathloul, reported having faced abuses while imprisoned, including electric shocks, whippings and sexual assault. Saudi Arabia has denied the allegations.
Human Rights Watch said prosecutors charged Al-Hathloul in 2019 with offenses related to her human rights advocacy, before later amending her charge sheet and transferring her case in late November to the country’s notorious Specialized Criminal Court, which specializes in handling terrorism cases.
Convicting Al-Hathloul between Christmas and New Year shows Saudi Arabia wants to minimize the attention her conviction gets, because they are embarrassed over how they treated her and should be, said Adam Coogle, a deputy director with the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch.
“This was always a total charade and travesty of justice,” he tweeted.
