MADINAH, 3 April 2008 — A police officer who accompanied two members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who were arrested on suspected involvement in a car accident in Madinah on Monday that killed two men and two women told investigators that the commission agents pursued the car, a reliable source told Arab News. Commission members are not supposed to give hot chase to suspects.
The commission’s car has been taken into custody, the source added.
While the bereaved relatives demanded the speedy return of the bodies, the authorities told them that it could be done only after the completion of investigations.
Police arrested the two commission members and the policeman on Tuesday following eyewitness reports that a commission car was seen in hot pursuit of a car shortly before the accident took place on the Khaleel Road.
The homicide department of the General Investigation and Prosecution Board will conduct the detailed investigation of the accident, according to the source.
The detained officials are members of the commission’s office at the Al-Jarf district where the accident happened. Those who were killed in the accident included a woman and her daughter, according to the relatives who identified them.
The commission’s director in Madinah, Fahd Al-Khidr, called the allegations regarding the commission’s involvement in the accident baseless and said his organization had nothing to do with the accident.
Informed sources said three people died on the spot while one passenger breathed his last at a hospital. Civil Defense officers rushed to the accident site and took the dead and injured to hospital.
Col. Mohsen Al-Radadi, spokesman for the Madinah police, said authorities were looking into the cause of the accident.
Meanwhile, investigations are still under way regarding the involvement of two commission members in a high speed chase that led to the deaths of a young man and a woman near Tabuk area last month.
According to eyewitnesses, the young Saudi and his fellow passenger in a Toyota Camry died on March 16 when their car hit a truck on the Tabuk-Madinah Highway, causing the car to go up in flames. The couple, who were suspected by the commission members of wrongdoing, were fleeing arrest.
In a similar case in Taif recently, authorities are investigating the alleged involvement of commission members in a car chase that led to an accident in which a young motorist was seriously hurt. The woman who was in the car was handed over to her relatives.
Officials of the commission have consistently denied in statements to the local media that commission members have been involved in any car chases. They have also said that if a member were proved to have been involved in a car chase, he would be subjected to punishment.
According to instructions from the Interior Ministry, commission members are also required by law to hand over any suspect to local police. Commission members, according to human rights officials in Saudi Arabia, have allegedly violated this directive repeatedly in the past.
