Loujain al-Hathloul
Saudi Arabian activist
Loujain al-Hathloul (Arabic: لجين الهذلول Lujjayn al-Hadhlūl; born 31 July 1989) is a Saudi women's rights activist, social media figure, and political prisoner. She was arrested on several occasions for defying the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia. In May 2018, she and several prominent women's rights activists were kidnapped in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and deported to Saudi Arabia, where they were charged with "attempting to destabilise the kingdom." Her ex-husband, Saudi stand-up comedian Fahad al-Butairi, was forcibly returned from Jordan to the Kingdom and placed under arrest.
For her women's rights activism, Al-Hathloul was awarded the 2019 PEN America /Barbey Freedom to Write Award and the 2020 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize. She was one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People of 2019".
She was released from prison on 10 February 2021. As of July 2025, she is under a de facto travel ban.
Early life and education
She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia.
Women's rights activism (2014–2017)
Al-Hathloul is known both for her role in the Women to Drive Movement and in opposing the Saudi male guardianship system. On 1 December 2014, she was arrested and detained for 73 days after an attempt to cross the border in her car from the UAE to Saudi Arabia, on charges related to defying the female driving ban in the kingdom, despite having a UAE driver's license.
The public source identifies “Loujain al-Hathloul” as saudi Arabian activist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Loujain, al-Hathloul and Saudi.
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This entry incorporates text from “Loujain al-Hathloul” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.