Jail for a Saudi woman who said women should drive

IF LOUJAIN AL-HATHLOUL is guilty of trying to harm national security and advance a foreign agenda, as a Saudi court found on December 28th, then what about Muhammad bin Salman? For Ms Hathloul merely campaigned to end the ban on woman drivers in Saudi Arabia. Prince Muhammad, its de facto ruler, actually lifted the ban in 2018, not long after Ms Hathloul was detained.

The kingdom denies that Ms Hathloul was arrested just for her driving campaign, which included an attempt in 2014 to motor from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia (leading to an earlier stint in prison). Rather, her offence was trying to undermine the royal family by, among other things, speaking to international human-rights groups and foreign journalists. The original charge sheet noted, absurdly, that she mentioned her arrest in her cover letter when applying for a job at the UN and that she had also spoken to European diplomats. In the end she was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison.

The court suspended much of that sentence, and backdated the start of her jail term, so Ms Hathloul will serve only three more months. But, according to her family, she has already suffered immensely. In 2018 she was kidnapped by Emirati security forces in Abu Dhabi, where she was studying, and taken back to Saudi Arabia, where she was later arrested...