Saudi authorities decided to extend the imprisonment of female driving activist Manal Al Shareef for 10 more days despite reports that she had quit a campaign to press for ending a long-standing ban on driving cars by women in the conservative Gulf Kingdom.
Al Shareef was arrested last Saturday and jailed for five days after she was caught defying the ban and driving her car through the streets of the eastern town of Khobar.
The woman had been due to be released on Wednesday but officials said her imprisonment has been extended for 10 days starting from last Thursday, local newspapers reported on Saturday.
“We have orders to extend her jail term for 10 days as from Thursday,” the papers quoted captain Abdullah al Harbi, prisons spokesman in the eastern port of Dammam as saying.
Newspapers on Thursday said Al Shareef, who is kept in the women’s prison in Dammam, decided to quit a women’s campaign to be launched on June 17 to push for ending the driving ban.
Ajel newspaper quoted her father Masoud Al Shareef as saying on Saturday that he had presented a written apology to authorities at the request of Prince Mohammed bin Abdul Aziz of the eastern region.
“I presented an apology letter and a pledge that my daughter will not repeat this mistake…but there is nothing new yet as she is still in prison…I don’t know why but I call on authorities to forgive her and treat her nicely…she committed a mistake but not a crime… my daughter has a little son, who is ill and lying in the hospital…he always cries for his mother.”
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