Saudi authorities have blocked the website of a regional human rights group which reported the case of a woman who tried to defy the kingdom’s ban on female drivers.

Saudi authorities have blocked the website of a regional human rights group which reported the case of a woman who tried to defy the kingdom's ban on female drivers.

Attempts inside Saudi Arabia to access the Internet site of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (http://gc4hr.org) brought up a notice on Tuesday saying: "Sorry, the requested page is unavailable."

The website, still accessible outside Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday condemned the arrests of two activists, Loujain Hathloul and Maysaa Alamoudi, whose case has attracted worldwide publicity.

Border officers stopped Hathloul when she tried to drive from neighbouring United Arab Emirates into Saudi Arabia. Alamoudi, a UAE-based Saudi journalist, later arrived to support her.

Both were arrested, activists said.

Their arrest "forms part of an ongoing systematic policy of harassment by the Saudi authorities against activists who demand the women's right to drive a car in Saudi Arabia," the Gulf Centre for Human Rights said.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world which does not allow women to get behind the wheel.

On Tuesday the Gulf Centre for Human Rights posted a message saying it "deplores the blocking of its website... by the Saudi authorities and considers it as a form of repression that is part of intimidation patterns that are being used persistently in the kingdom these days".

It did not say what might have prompted the censorship, but said it occurred "at a time when human rights defenders are exposed to various kinds of harassment and arrests, arbitrary imprisonment and unfair trials that lack legal procedures and minimum international standards".

A court in Saudi ally and neighbor Bahrain on Monday sentenced in absentia the director of the centre, Maryam al-Khawaja, to a year's jail for assaulting police.