Al-Hathloul is a Saudi women’s rights activist who was released from prison in 2021 after serving two years, but is under strict conditions of no travelling or political engagement. She was a fierce critic of the law forbidding women to drive in Saudi Arabia and she used social media to challenge this and the male guardianship system. In 2014, she was detained for 73 days after she attempted to drive into Saudi Arabia from the United Arab Emirates. A year later, Al-Hathloul attempted to stand in the local elections, which marked the first time Saudi women were allowed to vote, but was ultimately barred. She was detained again in 2018, but this time she was tortured and held in prison without charges or trial for ten months, but then charged the following year with attempting to destabilize the kingdom. She is continuing with a US lawsuit against an Emirati cyber-surveillance firm (Dark Matter) and three former US intelligence operatives accused of hacking her iPhone which led to her extradition from the UAE to Saudi.