Saudi religious police arrested for attack on woman

Members of Saudi Arabia’s religious police are arrested for allegedly brutalizing a young woman outside a Riyadh shopping mall, local media reports on Tuesday.

The young woman’s case, filmed and put on line two weeks ago, led to a wave of indignation on the Internet.

Video purportedly shows members of the religious police, who enforce Islamic morality, chasing two women and then roughly handling one of them whose black abaya robe opened to reveal her leg.

The Asharq al-Awsat and Okaz dailies quoted the interior ministry as saying “the individuals implicated in this assault were arrested for interrogation.”

The reports did not say how many members of the religious police were detained. The agency is officially known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Mutawaa).

— AFP