{"id":2094,"date":"2014-12-25T23:42:06","date_gmt":"2014-12-25T23:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/up\/wordpress\/2014\/12\/25\/saudi-women-drivers-sent-to-terrorism-court\/"},"modified":"2022-10-29T18:27:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T17:27:57","slug":"saudi-women-drivers-sent-to-terrorism-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/saudi-women-drivers-sent-to-terrorism-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi women drivers sent to ‘terrorism’ court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two women’s rights campaigners detained in Saudi Arabia have been transferred to a special tribunal for “terrorism”, activists said on Thursday after the women appeared in court. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ruling came at a hearing in Al-Ahsa, in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, according to the activists who declined to be named.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loujain Hathloul has been detained since December 1 after she tried to drive into the kingdom from neighbouring United Arab Emirates in defiance of a ban.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world which does not allow women to drive.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maysaa Alamoudi, a UAE-based Saudi journalist, arrived at the border to support Hathloul and was also arrested.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Activists did not provide full details of the allegations against the pair but said investigations appeared to focus on the women’s social media activities rather than their driving.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They will transfer her case to the terrorism court,” said an activist familiar with Hathloul’s case, adding that her lawyer plans to appeal.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A second activist confirmed that Alamoudi’s case was also being moved to the specialist tribunal.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hathloul has 228,000 followers on Twitter.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before her arrest she tweeted, sometimes with humour, details of the 24 hours she spent waiting to cross into Saudi Arabia after border officers stopped her.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alamoudi has 131,000 followers and has also hosted a programme on YouTube discussing the driving ban.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early December Saudi authorities blocked the website of a regional human rights group which reported the women’s case.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporters Without Borders, a watchdog, this year named Saudi Arabia as one of 19 countries where government agencies are “enemies of the Internet” for their censorship and surveillance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October, dozens of women posted images online of themselves behind the wheel as part of an online campaign supporting the right to drive.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response, the Ministry of Interior said it would “strictly implement” measures against anyone undermining “the social cohesion”.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Activists say women’s driving is not technically illegal but that the ban is linked to tradition and custom in the conservative kingdom.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two women’s rights campaigners detained in Saudi Arabia have been transferred to a special tribunal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ynews2","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3593,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2094\/revisions\/3593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}