Fatima al-Timani was jailed in July with her two children, a girl of 2 called Nuha and a boy, Sulaiman, who has just turned 1. The court has said that she could be freed if she returns to her estranged family, who engineered the annulment of her marriage last year because they despised her husband, Mansour.

But Ms al-Timani, 34, insisted: “I’m leaving this place on one condition only — that I go back to my husband.”

She sent a tearful message to the Saudi monarch, a popular and respected leader who believes in gradual reform. “I ask for justice. I don’t want money or anything else. I just want to go back to my husband and live with my children,” she told Arab News, an English-language newspaper.

The case has riveted the usually reserved Saudi media, which have been sympathetic to the couple who wed for love more than four years ago in a country where most marriages are arranged. The couple had been married for more than three years and already had Nuha when two of Fatima’s half-brothers demanded that they divorce on the grounds of “tribal incompatibility” and took the case to court.

They claimed that Mr alTimani, 37, had lied about his tribal background to enhance his social status when he originally sought her family’s approval. He denies the charge.

The marriage was declared void in July last year, without the couple being in court. They had attended only one of the hearings before they began moving around the kingdom to avoid alleged harassment from her family. The couple only discovered seven months after the ruling that they were no longer legally married.

They fled once more but were arrested by the secret police for living in sin and sent to a prison in the port city of Dammam.

Mr al-Timani was told that he could leave jail if he had a sponsor. At first he refused to leave his wife and children in prison, but eventually decided he needed to be free to help to reverse the judge’s ruling.

His daughter, Nuha, was able to leave jail and join him when she reached the age of 2.

The case is now before an appeals court and a result is expected within weeks. The couple’s lawyer is optimistic.

Ms al-Timani, in a statement from jail, claimed that her half-brothers, who are her legal guardians after their father’s death, have attempted to marry her to another man who was rumoured to be a “drug addict and an alcoholic”. She also insisted that her late father had approved heartily of her marriage. Ms al-Timani, pregnant with the couple’s second child at the time, was allowed to attend one of the early hearings and was asked if she agreed to a divorce. “I said ‘absolutely not’ and showed a medical report verifying my pregnancy,” she said.

Her lawyer said that the original ruling missed two vital lines of the law. These “state clearly that if incompatibility was discovered after the marriage then the wife is the only person to decide whether to ask for divorce or endure in the marriage”, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem said.

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