defence of countless women and girls." After staying in hiding for four months, Gulalai Ismail took refuge in New York, US in September 2019. She said, "if I had ended up in prison and tortured for many years, my voice would have been silenced. The last few months have been awful. I have been threatened, harassed, and I am lucky to be alive." After she went into hiding, both of Gulalai Ismail's parents were charged with "terrorism financing" in a case that lasted for more than a year. The Ismail family said their home in Islamabad was raided by security forces five times while she was in hiding. "They all come in, in plain-clothes with their guns out. They surround the area, with 30 or 40 vehicles. Everyone comes out and enters the house, searching from the bathrooms to the roof," her father said. However, the Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor denied that the military had any role in the raids. In July 2020, a Peshawar anti-terrorism court judge dismissed the case against her parents for lack of evidence, but a few weeks later, authorities re-filed the case with the additional allegation that her parents had directly facilitated the Pakistani Taliban in the Peshawar church bombing in 2013 and the Peshawar Shia mosque attack in 2015. The charges were refuted by the Ismail family. Separately, her father, retired professor Muhammad Ismail, was also charged with sharing "anti-state content" on social media and expressing dissent against the government. In January 2021, a judge ordered him to "stop sharing objectionable content." After the hearing of the case, Muhammad Ismail told Al Jazeera: "Honouring the orders of the court, I hereby surrender my right to share my dissident voices on social media, therefore I say goodbye to Facebook and Twitter." On 2 February 2021, Muhammad Ismail was again arrested on terrorism charges, which rights groups said was part of a sustained campaign of judicial harassment against him. After spending more than two months in jail, he was released on bail on 15 April 2021. Gulalai Ismail said, "my father’s bail is a relief, but his health is fragile and even after the release he will have to attend the trial court dates on daily basis, which will have a huge toll on his already deteriorating health." Awards and recognition Ismail won the 2009 YouthActionNet Fellowship and the 2010 Paragon Fellowship. She