Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent women’s rights activist on trial in Saudi Arabia, faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years if convicted, her sister said. 

“My sister must be released. … All she has done is ask for women to be treated with the dignity and freedom that should be their right. For that, the Saudi authorities are seeking the maximum sentence available under the law — 20 years in prison,” Hathloul’s sister Lina told The Guardian newspaper Wednesday. 

Hathloul, 31, is the most well known of a group of female activists arrested in May 2018 as part of the Saudi government’s sweeping crackdown on women’s right-to-drive campaigners. Hathloul has remained in prison for the past two years, where her family says she has been tortured with waterboarding, electric shocks and sexual harassment. In late October, Hathloul launched a two-week hunger strike to protest her detention, which her family says has included stints in solitary confinement. 

The conservative Gulf kingdom denies the reports of torture, and insists that Hathloul and the others were detained over national security concerns, not their activism. The charges against Hathloul, which United Nations experts have called “spurious,” are based on allegations that she communicated with journalists, activists and human rights organizations who are “hostile to the king.”