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RIYADH: A businesswoman was detained and
strip-searched by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for sitting in a
Starbucks coffee shop with an unrelated man, prohibited in the
country, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The incident came just days after
a UN report blasted the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom for
widespread discrimination against women and as a UN expert on
women’s rights began a visit to the country.
It also came as a Saudi princess
announced a scholarship to promote women in journalism, saying
“women journalists are best placed to promote cultural
communication between men and women in Saudi society.”
The English-language Arab News
quoted a 40-year-old financial consultant, named only as Yara,
saying members of the powerful Commission for the Promotion of
Virtue and Prevention of Vice arrested her on Monday.
She said she was holding a
business meeting with the man in a branch of Starbucks in Riyadh in
a section reserved for families. Saudi law requires that unrelated
men and women be segregated in public.
Yara said she was taken to a
Riyadh prison, strip-searched and forced to sign a confession to
having been caught alone with a unrelated man—an illegal act in
the kingdom which enforces a strict Islamic moral code.
“I had no other choice but to
sign,” said the married mother of three. “I was scared for my
life. I was afraid that they would abuse me or do something to
me.”
She said the religious police,
known as the Muttawa, released her several hours later after her
husband, Hatim, intervened.
--AFP
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