Saudi Arabia has temporarily released three detained women’s rights activists amid international outcry, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Aziza al-Yousef, Eman al-Nafjan and an unnamed third woman were released after 10 months of detention, sources told the AP. The release came a day after a group of nearly a dozen women’s rights activists defended themselves before a three-judge panel in Riyadh.

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The women were arrested shortly after the Saudi government granted women the right to drive and were widely perceived as sending a message that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and not women’s activism, was responsible for recent reforms.

Loujain al-Hathloul, another outspoken women’s rights activist, was not among those released, according to the AP. Al-Hathloul was one of several prisoners named in a letter from nine Senate Democrats last week that called on the Saudi government to free her and several other detainees.

“This is a long overdue step as these women should never have been jailed in the first place and their release should certainly not be on a ‘temporary’ basis. They have been locked up, separated from their loved ones, subjected to torture and threats for simply peacefully calling for women’s rights and expressing their views,” Lynn Maalouf, Middle East director of research for the human rights group Amnesty International, said in a statement. “Amnesty International calls on the Saudi authorities to drop all the charges against them and the other women’s human rights defenders, who all must be released immediately and unconditionally.”

Amnesty International also called for independent investigations into claims by the detainees that they were tortured in government custody. In their testimony, the women said they were caned on their backs and thighs as well as electrocuted, waterboarded, groped and threatened with rape, according to the AP.