Katha Pollitt reports on a horror story from Saudi Arabia.

After proceedings that stretched out over nearly a year and violated many legal  norms, Wajeha Al-Huwaider, the prominent Saudi Human rights activist and  co-organizer of protests against the ban on women drivers, has been sentenced to  ten months in prison, along with her colleague Fawzia Al-Oyouni. (I interviewed  Al-Huwaider here.) After they serve their terms, both will be banned from travel for two years.

What did they do? They tried to help a Canadian woman whose Saudi husband is holding her hostage.

They were accused of kidnapping and trying to help Nathalie Morin, a  Canadian woman married to a Saudi, flee the country in June 2011. Morin, who has  said her husband locks her in the house and is abusive, has been trying for  eight years to leave Saudi Arabia with her three children. (There’s a  so-far-unsuccessful campaign, spearheaded by her mother, to get the Canadian  government to intervene.) Al-Huwaider says they were responding to a frantic  text message from Morin, who said her husband had gone away for a week and left  her locked in the house without enough food or drinkable water. When they  arrived at the house with groceries, they were arrested.

The two activists were found not guilty of kidnapping, but the judge convicted them of “Takhbib”—inciting a woman against her husband.

So in Saudi Arabia husbands are allowed to imprison their wives and children without enough water and food? And women who try to rescue such wives and children get ten months in jail? Interesting.