JEDDAH, 22 December — Police have arrested about 300 young men for blocking roads and disturbing families who were spending holidays on Jeddah Corniche on Monday night.
Lt. Gen. Asaad Abdul Kareem Al-Fareeh, director of public security, said the men were arrested at dawn on Monday, the second day of Eid Al-Fitr.
Several hundred young men blocked the main Corniche Road and started harassing families, ignoring orders by police to disperse.
Al-Fareeh said the men were still being interrogated by authorities who will decide the next course of action to punish the troublemakers on the Jeddah seaside where thousands of families and other picnickers had gathered to spend their Eid evening.
The youths went berserk on the beach sowing chaos and confusion in the crowd. Eyewitnesses said the youths put on masks to frighten women and children.
The situation was brought under control with the timely intervention of police. The unbecoming behavior of the youths prompted the authorities to order all shops and amusement centers along the Corniche to close down before 2 a.m.
"Though several other people might have been involved, they could not be arrested because of the huge crowd present," Al-Fareeh said. He warned that the security authorities will not tolerate harassment of women and children at picnic spots.
"Every miscreant will be given deterrent punishment even if their numbers are in the thousands," said the police chief, adding that several charges have been brought against those detained on Monday.
Appalled by the big number of offenders involved, Abdullah Al-Hakeem, a leading academic in Jeddah, called for severe punishments to deter such incidents in future.
Meanwhile, businessmen have called on the authorities to reconsider their decision to set a 2 a.m. deadline for closing shops in the area. They say that the order will lead to heavy losses to them.
In a separate development, a joint committee comprising representatives of the Civil Defense, the mayor’s office and the Jeddah police has issued formal warnings to seven amusement centers on the Corniche for violating municipal guidelines.
During the Eid holidays, the committee’s inspectors made 14 rounds of field visits to 46 amusement centers spread over an 11-km stretch on the Corniche.
