Al-Hashimi was arrested in Jeddah in February 2007 along with eight other critics of the Saudi Arabian government (Musa al-Qirni, Suliaman al-Rashudi, Abdul Rahman Khan, Essam Basrawi, Saif al-Din al-Sharif, Fahd al-Qurshi, Abdul Rahman al-Shumayri) and who planned to form a political party[REF] or human rights organization [REF].
The nine were brought to trial in the Specialized Criminal Court in 2011.