Yahya is a Saudi Arabian human rights defender and the head of London-based human rights NGO ALQST. Prior to his activism, Yahya was an officer with the Saudi royal air force, during which time he became more attuned to issues such as poverty, unemployment and repression in the country, and began discussing these issues in online and public forums. Yahya moved to the UK in 2013 to pursue a master’s degree in human rights and, as more activists were arrested in Saudi Arabia, he applied for political asylum in the UK. In 2014, Yahya established ALQST, which monitors and documents human rights violations in Saudi Arabia with the help of a netw