RIYADH, 6 February 2008 — After a stressful day that involved an alarming phone call, a flight from Jeddah to Riyadh and a face-off with the virtue commission to get his wife out of prison, Hatim said yesterday was filled with overwhelming calls of support and expressions of sympathy from as far away as Germany.
“I was overwhelmed by the support and concern shown by people,” said Hatim, an executive director of a prominent company in Jeddah. “Complete strangers have been calling me to express their sympathy for my wife and family.” The expressions of sympathy come a day after Hatim’s wife Yara was escorted from a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh by a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice and drawn into an hours-long ordeal that involved fingerprinted confessions under duress; transport to prison; a humiliating physical search; and verbal admonishments of immoral conduct from a “sheikh” sitting behind a one-way mirror.
The couple returned to Jeddah yesterday, but Hatim said he is angry and described the people that detained his wife as “thugs”. Hatim added that a doctor came to his home yesterday to treat his wife for trauma induced by the ordeal that began with an innocent cup of coffee in a public place and ended with charges against her reputation.
“I look at this as if she had been kidnapped by thugs,” Hatim told Arab News on the day of his wife’s arrest on Monday. And now, he is considering legal action. Arab News also learned that Yara’s colleague, a Syrian financial analyst, was released from detention yesterday morning.
Mufleh Al-Qahtani, vice president of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), said yesterday that his organization would investigate the incident and verify the violation before taking necessary measures. Referring to the issue of strip-searching and violating privacy, Al-Qahtani said: “Regulations have been set on how to handle such cases.”
Al-Qahtani added: “Everybody should follow the regulations and nobody should violate them.”
He said the human rights society would provide legal assistance to Yara if she presents a formal complaint to them.
Arab News yesterday tried to contact Sheikh Abdullah Al-Shatri, director of the commission’s branch office in Riyadh, to get the commission’s side of this story, but Al-Shatri’s office manager said he was on vacation and that Sheikh Othman Al-Othman was the acting director.
After the office manager was briefed on Yara’s case, he requested that Arab News fax its written questions to Al-Othman. “He will reply to those questions later.”
Yara said she arrived in the capital Monday morning from Jeddah to check on the company’s new office. A commission member detained Yara while she was taking coffee with a colleague at the family section of Starbucks, located below her office in the same building.
Yara described how a commission member had to hail a taxi to get her to the nearest commission center. When she hesitated entering the taxi, she said the commission member threatened her. “I am the government and you have to get in,” she said, recounting the words of the commission member.
