RIYADH, 2 October 2005 — Four young men who used a mobile phone to film themselves sexually harassing two Saudi women in a Riyadh street have been arrested by the authorities.
“The Riyadh Police Department has arrested the youths who sexually harassed modestly-dressed Saudi girls who were walking near a pedestrian bridge in Al-Nahda district in Riyadh,” said a police statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
The police said they had received directives from Riyadh Governor Prince Salman and his deputy, Prince Sattam, to arrest the offenders as quickly as possible.
Three of the youths are Saudi while the fourth is believed to be Palestinian. The four are now in jail, awaiting trial in a Shariah court.
The film made by the youths has been widely circulated on the Internet and also exchanged by thousands of mobile users in the Kingdom via Bluetooth technology.
The film clip, which Arab News saw, showed the young men touching the Saudi girls, holding them by force and harassing them as they walked near the pedestrian bridge in the evening.
The girls were modestly dressed in their abayas with their faces and bodies completely covered.
Saudi men and women expressed outrage at the incident.
Iman Ibrahim, a Saudi woman, said: “We live in a secure Muslim country that strongly rejects any kind of sexual harassment. I wonder why such an assault occurred since we (Saudi women) wear such modest clothes in public. This behavior is unjustifiable. I ask the authorities to put an end to such harassment by imposing a severe penalty on the perpetrators. I am confident that those who committed this ugly assault suffer from psychological and social disorders. A good upbringing and social awareness are the proper way to eradicate this deviant conduct.”
Another Saudi national, Khaled Al-Oraini, said: “I was shocked when I saw the video clip. I wondered how a human being who also happens to be a Muslim could commit this appalling crime.”
The Saudi headmistress of a Jeddah school said: “The names and pictures of these people who harassed women in public should be in our local newspapers as a deterrent.”
Mousa Al-Otaibi, an employee of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), said: “I think this behavior was both barbaric and reckless. The reasons which cause young men to commit these acts is due to factors such as weakness of a religious conscience. Another factor is that many young men are affected by the violence and sexual harassment in the Western media and see it as something which is fun.”
Al-Otaibi said Saudi society rejected such behavior and wondered what those criminals would have felt if young men had done similar things to their sisters or other women in their families.
Last year, a mobile sex clip was widely distributed in the Kingdom and it too horrified many people. The clip showed a black man raping a Saudi girl as she pleaded for help. The governor of Riyadh immediately gave orders to find the offenders and bring them to justice.
Two young Saudis were arrested and sentenced by the high court to prison terms and flogging for having planned and filmed a Nigerian driver sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl.
The judge sentenced the principal defendant, Barjis ibn Faleh, 27, to 12 years imprisonment and 1,200 lashes; the other Saudi, Abdul Rahman ibn Haif, 22, was sentenced to two years and 200 lashes. The Nigerian, Youssef Abkar Muhammad Abdullah, was sentenced to six years in prison and 600 lashes.
