{"id":28328,"date":"2019-01-08T20:22:40","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T20:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28328"},"modified":"2019-01-08T20:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T20:22:40","slug":"story-of-disappeared-saudi-power-couple-spotlights-dissident-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28328","title":{"rendered":"Story of disappeared Saudi power couple spotlights dissident crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\"><cite class=\"el-editorial-source\"> (CNN)<\/cite>A stand-up comedian and women&#8217;s right-to-drive activist, Fahad al-Butairi and Loujain al-Hathloul, were once seen as a groundbreaking Saudi power couple in a country that was rapidly relaxing its strict social rules.  <\/p>\n<div class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\">Since then, both have been arrested, and a Twitter thread detailing their disappearance has gone viral, keeping alive a debate about the Kingdom&#8217;s crackdown on dissidents. That debate reached a fever pitch after the October <a href=\"https:\/\/cnn.com\/2018\/12\/09\/middleeast\/jamal-khashoggi-last-words-intl\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi<\/a> at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.<\/div>\n<div class=\"zn-body__paragraph speakable\">American writer and television producer Kirk Rudell tweeted about his friendship with Butairi, who was widely known as the &#8220;Jerry Seinfeld of Saudi Arabia,&#8221; and Hathloul, an internationally-known advocate for ending the prohibition of women driving in the country, on January 2. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(CNN)A stand-up comedian and women&#8217;s right-to-drive activist, Fahad al-Butairi and Loujain al-Hathloul, were once seen as a groundbreaking Saudi power couple in a country that was rapidly relaxing its strict social rules. Since then, both have been arrested, and a Twitter thread detailing their disappearance has gone viral, keeping alive a debate about the Kingdom&#8217;s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":28329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}