A leading Saudi reformist and his brother started to serve time behind bars on Saturday after being convicted of inciting women's protests in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.
Abdullah al-Hamed, a prominent Islamist reformist, and his brother Issa were sentenced last November to six months and four months in jail respectively.
The sentences were upheld by an appeals court last month, but the two men were still free pending a decision on the rulings by the governor's office of al-Qassim region where their trial took place.
"The two brothers turned themselves in at 1pm after they were summoned on Wednesday to serve the sentences," a family friend said.
"They handed themselves in at the Buraida prison," in al-Qassim, 320km north of the Saudi capital Riyadh, he added, requesting anonymity.
The charges against the Hamed brothers were linked to two sit-ins last summer by women in al-Qassim.
The women mounted the protests to demand their husbands or brothers, held on suspicion of involvement in a wave of violence unleashed by suspected Islamist militants in 2003, either receive a public trial or be released.
Public protests are banned in Saudi Arabia.
More than 40 Saudi human rights activists and reformists called earlier this month for the annulment of the "unfair ruling" against the Hamed brothers.
In November, New York-based Human Rights Watch slammed Saudi Arabia for jailing the two reformers, saying the judgement proved it was illegal to criticize the authorities in the kingdom.
Abdullah al-Hamed was one of three reformists who spent 17 months in jail for demanding a constitutional monarchy before being pardoned by King Abdullah immediately after he assumed the throne in August 2005.
The two others -- Matruk al-Faleh and Ali al-Demaini -- were among the signatories of Sunday's statement, which the group said was issued to mark last week's ratification of the Arab Convention for Human Rights by Saudi Arabia's appointed Shura (consultative) Council.
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