Have a Heart!

Religious police in Saudi Arabia are banning the sale of Valentine's Day gifts including red roses.

The Saudi Gazette quoted shop workers as saying that officials had warned them to remove all red items including flowers and wrapping paper. Black market prices for roses were already rising, the paper said.

Saudi authorities consider Valentine's Day, along with a host of other annual celebrations, as un-Islamic.

In addition to the prohibition on celebrating non-Islamic festivals, the authorities consider Valentine's Day as encouraging relations between men and women outside wedlock - punishable by law in the conservative kingdom.

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's “Mutaween” police.

Her story offers a rare first-hand glimpse of the discrimination faced by women living in Saudi Arabia. In her first interview with the foreign press, Yara told The Times that she would remain in Saudi Arabia to challenge its harsh enforcement of conservative Islam rather than return to America.

If I want to make a difference I have to stick around. If I leave they win. I can't just surrender to the terrorist acts of these people, said Yara, who moved to Jeddah eight years ago with her husband, a prominent businessman.

Her ordeal began with a routine visit to the new Riyadh offices of her finance company, where she is a managing partner. The electricity temporarily cut out, so Yara and her colleagues, who are all men, went to a nearby Starbucks to use its wireless internet.

She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café's “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.

Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?'. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin, recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.

The men were from Saudi Arabia's Religious Police, the so called Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.

Yara's husband, Hatim, used his political contacts in Jeddah to track her whereabouts. He was able to secure her release.

I was lucky. I met other women in that prison who don't have the connections I did, she said. Her story has received rare coverage in Saudi Arabia, where the press has been sharply critical of the police.

Yara was visited by officials from the American Embassy, who promised they would file a report.

A US businesswoman living in Saudi Arabia fears for her life after the religious police issued a rare statement defending her arrest this month for having coffee with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara, a 37-year-old married mother of three, said that she was strip-searched, forced to sign false confessions and told by a judge that she would “burn in hell”, before she was released on February 4.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice denounced her publicly with a statement posted on the internet on Monday night saying that her actions violated the Sharia of the country: It’s not allowed for any woman to travel alone and sit with a strange man and talk and laugh and drink coffee together like they are married.

All of these are against the law and it’s clear it’s against the law. First, for a woman to work with men is against the law and against religion. Second, the family sections at coffee shops and restaurants are meant for families and close relatives.

The story of Yara captured international attention and has started fierce debate within Saudi society, where reformers and human rights groups are pressuring the Government to be more liberal.

The powerful religious police vowed to sue two newspaper columnists who have written in defence of Yara and who criticised the “Mutaween” and their handling of the incident, saying: The commission has the right to sue the writers because of the lies they are spreading. It gives the wrong idea of Saudi Arabia.

Yara, a managing partner in a finance company has returned to work but she no longer travels to the offices of the company in Riyadh.

Persecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.

The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.

They were arrested following a request of the hated religious Police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

A married university professor has been sentenced to 180 lashes and eight months in prison for having coffee with a female student.

The professor of psychology at Umm al-Qra University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, was caught in a "honey trap" operation after angering members of the religious police during a training course, his lawyer said.

The academic is said to have received a call from a supposed student, who asked to discuss a problem in person; he agreed, provided she brought along a brother as a chaperone.
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When the man arrived at the meeting place, the girl was alone, and he was arrested for being in a state of khulwa - seclusion - with an unrelated female.

Abdullah al-Sanousi, the professor's lawyer, said his client had upset some of the commission's trainees on a course that a number had failed.

The professor, who is said to have taped the girl admitting that she was sent by the police, is appealing against the sentence.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has reported that blogger Roshdi Algadir was arrested by religious police in Saudi Arabia on 4th November.

He was taken from his place of work in Al-Dammam city, held for three hours, beaten up and forced to sign an agreement never again to publish his work on the internet. The reason behind the attack is a poem that Algadir has posted on his blog (in Arabic).

Roshdi Algadir, winner of an international award for his collections of poetry, had posted some of them on his blog. Following this he was surprised by members of the Hisba apparatus who snatched him from his work, beat him and accused him of apostasy.

Algadir is insistent that poetry should only be subject to the critiques of literature, but the way he was arrested confirms the insistence of the apparatus to act against the interests of freedom of expression in the name of religious repression.

Gamal Eid, executive director of ANHRI stated: The members of the Hisba apparatus threaten the legal system and all the citizen's rights in the name of protecting the Islamic religion. The existence of this apparatus is an insult to Islam, depicting it as it does, as anti freedom of speech and anti freedom of expression.

A Saudi court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house. They had delivered 5 loaves of bread that she had requested.

According to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan, troubles for the woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, began last year when a member of the religious police entered her house in the city of Al-Chamli and found her with two unrelated men, Fahd and Hadian.

Fahd told the policeman he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd added that his friend Hadian was escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman then arrested both men.

Al Watan obtained the court's verdict and reported it was partly based on the testimony of the religious police. In his ruling, the judge said it was proved that Fahd is not Sawadi's son through breastfeeding.

The court also doled out punishment to the two men. Fahd was sentenced to four months in prison and 40 lashes; Hadian was sentenced to six months in prison and 60 lashes.

Sawadi told the newspaper that she will appeal, adding that Fahd is indeed her son through breastfeeding.

The case sparked anger in Saudi Arabia. It's made everybody angry because this is like a grandmother, Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN:Forty lashes -- how can she handle that pain? You cannot justify it.

Saudi Arabia's religious police want to install surveillance cameras in shopping centres throughout the country in order to watch young people. We will place surveillance cameras in all shopping centres and public places to monitor the behaviour of young people, said General Abdel Aziz al-Hamin, chief of the committee for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice.

Our objective is to correct the mistakes made by some youths, in order to protect their moral integrity, said al-Hamin.

A Saudi man has been arrested following an in-depth confession of his sexual exploits on a Lebanese talk show. He was arrested for publicising vice, police said

Abdul Jawad, an employee of Saudi Airlines, recounted to the Red Line TV show’s audience explicit details about his sex life, which ultimately landed him in jail for violations of Saudi Arabian law.

While being interviewed on the talk show, Jawad described how he slept with a neighbor at the age of fourteen, and his use of the Bluetooth functionality of his cellphone to pick up women in Saudi Arabia, as they are forbidden to interact with men in public.

Jawad also shared with the audience a recipe for an aphrodisiac.

Red Line is a talk show on Lebanon’s satellite TV channel LBC that addresses a variety of social and political issues. The show airs in other Arab countries, and is popular in Saudi Arabia.

English-language daily Arab News reported that about 100 people filed complaints to Saudi officials after Jawad’s segment on Red Line was aired.

Under Saudi Arabia’s strict Wahhabi interpretation of Sharia law, it is forbidden to speak publicly about what the authorities determine to be vice. Pre-marital sex is also prohibited under shariah law, but Jawad could only be convicted of engaging in pre-marital sex if he were to attest to it in a Saudi court.

According to Arab News, Jawad plans to file a lawsuit against the producers of Red Line, claiming his remarks were taken out of context.

The program presents anomalies and deviancy in society that are unacceptable and immoral and should be punished according to sharia, Ahmad Qasim Al-Ghamdi, Mecca head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the religious police, said.

The Saudi offices of a Lebanon-based satellite station controlled by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal could face closure over a racy talk show featuring a man boasting about his sex life.

The local operations of the Saudi billionaire's broadcaster LBC could be shut down because of the offensive nature of the programme, Abdullah al-Othaim, a senior district judge in Jeddah said.

Jeddah investigators continued to examine evidence to see what charges would be filed against Saudi citizen Mazen Abdul-Jawad, whose discussion of his sex life on LBC's Bold Red Line in July led to his arrest on Friday.

Two other men who took part in the programme were also arrested, while a fourth fled to Morocco, local newspapers cited Saudi police as saying.

Abdul-Jawad's confessions, that he first had sex at 14 with a neighbour, used sex aids and liked to use his cellphone's Bluetooth function to try to pick up women, outraged Saudi conservatives.

In the wake of the TV controversy when Saudi citizen Mazen Abdul-Jawad discussed his sex life on LBC's Bold Red Line, a Saudi ministry is clamping down.

Issuing a strong warning. Abdullah al-Jasser, undersecretary for media affairs at Saudi Arabia’s Culture and Information Ministry, said: Every Saudi investor in satellite television channels has to be sensitive to patriotic and social responsibility. Managers of these channels should be selected for their integrity and responsibility, he said, adding that investors should not leave management to people who have orientations and ideas ... harmful to the kingdom and to Saudi investments.

What is being aired by these channels owned by Saudi citizens in terms of topics that violate the Islamic creed and public morals represents a serious offence to the kingdom and to every citizen. These channels (must) not be used as a bridge for hostile media campaigns that ... market Western ideas and beliefs.

Police and members of the Saudi religious police, Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, have begun a campaign of apprehending youths who are supposedly indecently dressed in public, Al-Watan newspaper reported.

The campaign follows a directive issued in this regard by the Ministry of Interior.

The directive was issued to curb a prevalence of 'morally wrong habits' among the youth that do not comply with Islamic law and local customs. According to the directive, second-time offenders risk having their cases referred to the General Prosecution and Investigation Commission for legal action.

Col. Muhsin Al-Raddadi, official spokesman for Madinah police, said the Interior Ministry's directive is aimed at curbing indecent clothing and behavior.

The directives was issued particularly to curb the prevalence of the low-waist jeans worn by youths.

A Saudi man who boasted about his sexual exploits on television has been sentenced to five years in prison and 1,000 lashes, drawing worldwide attention to the conservative kingdom's highly repressive laws on personal morality.

Mazen Abdel-Jawad was convicted of publicising vice and confessing to crimes on a satellite television channel for describing his conquests on LBC TV's Bold Red Line talkshow. He bragged that he first had sex at the age of 14.

Abdel-Jawad was also told by a criminal court in Jeddah that he would not be allowed to travel abroad for five years after his release. His lawyer said he would appeal against the sentence.

The divorced airline employee was arrested in August by the religious police and charged after describing his sexual relationships and how he picked up women using Bluetooth mobile phone messaging. He was also shown on television with sex toys, condoms and lubricants in his red-themed bedroom and filmed cruising the streets of Jeddah looking for women.

The episode sent shock waves across Saudi Arabia. Many ordinary citizens reportedly filed petitions with the authorities after the programme was broadcast in mid-July, demanding that Abdul-Jawad be punished, even executed for moral corruption.

Three of his friends who appeared with him were sentenced to two years in jail and 300 lashes each.

A woman journalist has been sentenced to 60 lashes by a Saudi Arabian court after a man appearing on the television chat show she worked on described his sex life.

Rozanna al-Yami said she was too frustrated and upset to appeal the sentence, which was handed down by a judge in Jiddah as a deterrence.

The show, Bold Red Line, caused huge controversy in the ultra-conservative Arab state when it was broadcast in July on the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation's satellite channel. It featured a man called Mazen Abdul-Jawad talking openly about his active sex life and displaying sex toys, which were blurred out by the producers.

Al-Yami said she worked on the series as a co-ordinator but had not been involved with the offending edition. She had understood that the judge had dropped charges against her, which included involvement in the preparation of the program and advertising it on the internet.

Her conviction, she added, seemed to rest on the question of whether LBC was properly licensed to operate in Saudi Arabia: I had nothing to do with Mazen Abdul-Jawad's show. The verdict was just because I cooperated with LBC, she said. I was not aware (that LBC was unlicenced) but in the end this is the verdict and I accept it.

The Saudi ministry of culture and information yesterday questioned the validity of the court proceedings. Spokesman Abdul-Rahman al-Hazza said al-Yami should have been tried before a court that specialised in media issues and that failing to do so was a violation of Saudi law. It is a precedent to try a journalist before a summary court for an issue that concerns the nature of his job, he said. LBC's Western-style entertainment programmes and talk shows have made it a popular channel in Saudi Arabia, and royal billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is a shareholder.

The Saudi king has waived the lashing a court ordered against a woman for working at a Lebanese television channel that aired a sexual confessions programme.

He (King Abdullah) has asked the ministry of justice to drop the lashing against journalist Rozana al-Yami, information ministry spokesman Abdul Rahman al-Hazaa told AFP.

Hazaa said that the king has ordered the transfer of the cases to the ministry of information, referring to Yami's case and that of another female journalist, reportedly named Iman Rajab, who was convicted of working for the same controversial programme which caused a stir in the conservative kingdom.

A Saudi man who boasted who was sentenced to five years in jail after boasting about his sex life on television has appealed his case.

Mazen Abdul Jawad, who was also ordered to receive 1,000 lashes after his appearance of the LBC show Bold Red Line last July, has appealed the convictions handed down by a criminal court on Sharia law-based charges relating to immoral behaviour.

Three friends who appeared on the show with him and who were given two-year terms have also made an appeal, Muhammad Amin Mirdad, the judge presiding over the case, said in comments published by Arab News.

Amnesty International has called on Saudi Arabia to stay a sentence of 40 lashes handed down against a 75-year-old woman for breaching the kingdom's sex segregation rules.

The minister of the interior (Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz) is reported to have ordered the immediate detention and flogging of a 75-year-old woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, along with two Saudi Arabian men known only as Fahad and Hadyan, the London-based watchdog said. The Saudi Arabian authorities must not carry out the imminent flogging and imprisonment of an elderly woman and two younger men.

Amnesty said all avenues of appeal had been exhausted in Saudi courts against the trio's March conviction for being in the company of members of the opposite sex who were not close relatives.

It is abhorrent that an elderly woman is at risk of 40 lashes, said the deputy director of the watchdog's Middle East and North Africa Program, Philip Luther. We urge the authorities to prevent the imprisonment and flogging of Khamisa, Fahad and Hadyan. Sawadi and Fahad were sentenced to 40 lashes and four months' imprisonment, and Hadyan to 60 lashes and six months' imprisonment, Amnesty said. Sawadi also faces deportation to her native Syria on completion of her prison term.

A Saudi Arabia appeals court has upheld a sentence of five years in jail and 1,000 lashes for a man who boasted on TV of his sex life, reports say.

Mazen Abdul Jawad was convicted in October of immoral behaviour under the country's strict Islamic law code.

Sentences of two years in jail and 300 lashes were upheld for three friends of his who were also on the programme.

The men can appeal again to a higher court.

Saudi Arabia's feared muttawa — religious police — have launched the yearly campaign to banish from the shelves anything that could be construed as a romantic gift. They have been patrolling the shops and posting warnings in local newspapers to remind traders that anyone caught violating the ban will be punished.

Saudi Arabia adheres to a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam and bans the celebration of Western holidays — and Valentine's Day is a particular target because of its nominal connection to the life of a Christian saint.

But roses and romantic gifts are legal for the rest of the year — so amorous Saudis and expatriates have been buying their gifts well in advance of the Valentine's Day crackdown.

The interpretation of what constitutes a romantic gift can be a little arbitrary; one Western resident in the capital, Riyadh, said that the shelves in his local store had been stripped of almost all red items, with nervous storeowners taking no chances.

The head of Saudi Arabia's powerful religious police has fired the chief of the Mecca branch for advocating the mixing of the sexes.

Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamidi's suggestion in a newspaper interview this week that men and women should be left to mingle freely directly clashed with a central preoccupation of the force.

Mixing (between the sexes) is just natural and there is no good reason to ban it, al-Ghamidi said in the interview.He was dismissed soon after.

The force's new chief, Abdul-Aziz bin Humain, has been billed as a reformer and promised a new tone after being appointed by the king last year. But his dismissal of al-Ghamidi shows there are limits to how far he is willing to go.

Unrelated couples caught together in the same vehicle will not automatically face prosecution in Saudi Arabia as the conservative Muslim kingdom relaxes repressive rules prohibiting mixing of the sexes, the Saudi Gazette reported.

Under the new rules, unrelated men and women caught in the same vehicle could be pardoned if the circumstances in which they are found do not suggest immoral activities and neither has previous convictions, the local newspaper said.

However, any unrelated couples caught in the same vehicle can be held in custody for up to five days, the newspaper said.

The Saudi Gazette said the Commission for Investigation and Prosecution (CIP) has begun implementing the new rules.

When a Saudi religious policeman questioned a young couple walking together in an amusement park he got a painful surprise - when the woman suddenly attacked him.

The officer asked the pair to confirm their identities and relationship to one another.

The young man immediately collapsed for reasons that have not been made clear, the Jerusalem Post reported. But before the policeman could do anything else, the woman - believed to be in her mid-twenties - laid into him.

He was punched repeatedly about the head and upper torso during the attack in the eastern city of Hofuf Mubarraz. The beating was so severe and sustained, the officer was eventually taken to hospital suffering from severe bruising.

Neither religious nor local police have commented on the incident, which was widely played out in the Saudi media. If the woman is charged with assaulting the officer, she could face a lengthy prison term, or a lashing, or both. But public opinion appears to have been firmly behind her.

People are fed up with these religious police, and now they have to pay the price for the humiliation they put people through for years and years, Saudi human rights activist Wajiha Al Huwaidar told the Media Line news agency.

To see resistance from a woman means a lot... This is just the beginning and there will be more.

A Saudi court has convicted a man and sentenced him to four months in prison and 90 lashes for kissing a woman in a mall.

The daily newspaper Al-Yom reported that Saudi religious police arrested the man and two women after they were seen on mall cameras engaging in immoral movements in front of other shoppers.

The paper says the man is to receive three batches of lashes and is banned from malls for two years. The women will be tried in another court.