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Saudi woman to be tried for driving

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Summary of story from Yahoo! News, stomach July 20, symptoms 2011

A Saudi woman who was arrested after trying to drive herself to hospital in an emergency is to face trial, according to the Saudi daily Okaz.

The unnamed 35-year-old woman was arrested in Jeddah. She said she was driving because she was suffering from a haemorrhage and in the absence of public transport she had no other means of getting to hospital.

After her arrest she was released, with her father as guarantor.

Saudi Arabia is the only country where women are prohibited from driving. There is no law banning women from driving in Saudi Arabia, but the interior ministry imposes regulations based on a fatwa, or religious edict, stipulating that women should not be permitted to drive.

A group of defiant Saudi women got behind the wheels of their cars on June 17 in response to calls for nationwide action to break the ban.

The call spread through Facebook and Twitter was the largest mass action since November 1990, when 47 Saudi women were arrested and severely punished after demonstrating in cars.

The icon of the campaign was Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old computer-security consultant, who was arrested on May 22 and detained for 10 days after posting on YouTube a video of herself driving her car around the eastern city of Khobar (see WVoN coverage).

Last week, Saudi Arabia detained two Omani women for driving, releasing them after they signed a pledge not to drive again.

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