JEDDAH: The Summary Court here will issue its verdict on the case of the Saudi sex bragger Mazen Abdul Jawad and his three accomplices on Oct. 7, the local Arabic daily Al-Madinah reported on Thursday.
Judge Muhammad Amin asked the suspects to repent for publicizing vice, when Abdul Jawad appeared on LBC’s “Bold Red Line” weekly program talking explicitly about his sexual encounters and habits. The three unnamed men who have also been detained and charged appeared on the program, though they did not speak.
A court source cited by the paper said out of the four defendants some expressed repentance while others did not. They did not elaborate except to say the defendants who did not repent did so on the recommendation of legal counsel who warned that such a move could be considered admission of guilt.
Two women who have been identified only as “journalists” have also been accused of collusion in the alleged crime. They have been summoned for appearance before the court. Although they are not yet in custody they have been banned from traveling abroad.
Abdul Jawad’s lawyer Suleiman Al-Jumaie has accused LBC of whisking the original recordings of the hours-long interviews done for the program out of the country. His client maintains that the lengthy interviews were boiled down to a minutes-long segment portraying Abdul Jawad in the worst possible light.
Al-Jumaie says that the case is a media violation — that LBC violated community standards by airing the segment — rather than a criminal violation by his client. As such, the lawyer is asking the judge to dismiss the investigation against his client by the Prosecution and Investigation Commission.
