Family members of the women - some of whom allegedly faced torture and sexual harassment during interrogation - were permitted to attend the opening court session, but foreign journalists and western diplomats were barred from entering.
Visibly-distressed relatives huddled together outside the court room, clutching handwritten appeals for the judge as they awaited their turn to unite with the detainees inside.REUTERS/Fahad ShadeedBut London-based rights group ALQST said they were charged under the kingdom's sweeping cyber crime law, which carries prison sentences of up to 10 years, based on their contact with"hostile entities" including human rights organisations.
Sayari said the women would have access to independent lawyers for the trial, a right that family members claimed they had been denied for the entire stretch of their detention. "It now seems that the authorities will charge the women's rights activists, after keeping them in detention for nearly one year without any access to lawyers, and where they faced torture, ill treatment and sexual harassment," said Amnesty International's Middle East campaigns director Samah Hadid.
"The authorities are now treating defending women's rights as a crime, which is a dangerous escalation in the country and their crackdown on human rights activism," Hadid told AFP.More than a dozen activists, many of whom campaigned for years for the right to drive, were arrested in May last year - just a month before the kingdom ended its longstanding ban on female motorists. Some were subsequently released. She was arrested on 15 May and remains detained to date.
Where are our illustrious women liberators? Scared of the Muslims I would suggest.
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