RIYADH (AFP)
Saudi Arabia's religious police have hit back at critics of their arrest of a businesswoman in a Starbucks cafe for mixing with a male colleague, threatening to sue a journalist.
The powerful Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or religious police, charged the Saudi woman was making "suspicious gestures" while in the man's company and broke the law on several counts, in a statement published in the local press.
The 5,000-strong religious police accused the woman, named only as Yara, of violating both the law and Islamic tenets by flying unaccompanied from Jeddah to Riyadh and sitting alone with an unrelated man in a public place in a section reserved for families.
The religious police said its members went to the coffee shop after receiving information that the woman did not have her head covered and was wearing make-up and making "suspicious gestures" while in the man's company.
The statement also said the commission "reserves the right of its members ... to claim their legal right from columnist Abdullah al-Alami who accused them of abduction," it said.
The religious police, commonly known as Muttawa, said Alami, a columnist for the daily Al-Watan, had also accused them of strip-searching the woman, "which is no less reprehensible than ... the crime of kidnapping".
The businesswoman, a 40-year-old financial consultant, was quoted in the English-language daily Arab News on February 5 as saying she was detained and strip-searched by the Muttawa the previous day.
She had been sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop with an unrelated man, an activity which is taboo in Saudi Arabia. |
