© Provided by NBC News One of Saudi Arabia's most prominent women's rights activists was released from prison after some 1,000 days in detention and amid persistent international pressure for her to be released, her family tweeted Wednesday.
"The best day of my life, Loujain is at my parent's home," tweeted Alia al-Hathloul, Loujain's elder sister.
"Loujain is at home," tweeted another sister, Lina.
Loujain al-Hathloul was arrested in May 2018 along with several other female activists, after making a name for herself as one of the few women to openly call for women's right to drive in the deeply conservative kingdom. She also called for an end to Saudi Arabia's restrictive male guardianship system that had long limited women's freedom of movement.
Saudi Arabian official did not announce Al-Hathloul's release but her family's announcements come weeks after a Saudi judge sentenced her to five years and eight months in prison on December 28, according to a spokesperson for the country's Ministry of Media who spoke to NBC News at the time. Two years and 10 months of her sentence was suspended and the sentence was backdated to May 2018, the spokesperson added.
Al-Hathloul was convicted of agitating for change in Saudi Arabia while serving a foreign agenda, using the internet to harm public order and cooperating with individuals and institutions that were involved in crimes under anti-terror laws, according to the state-linked Saudi news site Sabq. NBC News was unable to independently verify the reporting.
Her detention came amid a sweeping and fierce crackdown on intellectuals, clerics, women's rights activists and members of the royal family presided over by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
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Rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said the charges leveled against Al-Hathloul were entirely related to her human rights work and have persistently called for her unconditional release.
Al-Hathloul's older sister, Alia, told NBC News in December that Al-Hathloul was appealing the verdict as well as another ruling that said she was not subjected to torture while in detention.
But Alia said Wednesday that a Saudi court of appeals had decided that the burden of proof was on Al-Hathloul to show that she had been tortured.
Saudi Arabia's persecution of imprisoned women's rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul
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Al-Hathloul's family say she has been subjected to electric shocks and has been sexually harassed. And rights groups have said that other detained women's rights activists have also been subjected to torture and sexual harassment. Saudi Arabia has denied the allegations.
Another sister, Lina, tweeted in December that Al-Hathloul is subject to a five-year travel ban.
While long a U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia enjoyed especially close relations with the Trump administration.
Trump chose Saudi Arabia as his first foreign trip as president, and praised Prince Mohammed, who had portrayed himself as a reformer eager to transform Saudi Arabia's deeply conservative society, as well as the crackdown on hundreds of top businessmen, officials and members of the royal family at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh in November 2017.
Trump also stood by the kingdom, even as the CIA concluded that the powerful crown prince ordered the brutal killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, in Istanbul in October 2018.
By contrast, as a presidential candidate Joe Biden pledged to "reassess" the U.S. relationship with Riyadh and described the kingdom as a "pariah."
Last week, President Biden announced an end to U.S. support for offensive operations in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Iran-backed Yemeni rebels since 2015.