DAMMAM, 4 June 2006 — Police have arrested an Arab expatriate lingerie sales rep who lured a woman in her early 30s to his home, attempted to sexually assault her in front of a hidden camera and then used the digital images later to blackmail his victim, the daily Al-Watan reported yesterday.
The woman managed to escape his attack, but the man contacted her later and threatened to post images of the encounter on the Internet unless she returned to submit to his unwelcome advances.
The woman went to local authorities and agreed to participate in a sting to capture the man so long as her identity was protected.
Brig. Ahmad Al-Asaimi, director of Dammam police, was able to trap the man at a market where the woman agreed to a rendezvous with him.
Police found evidence that the man may have been a repeat offender, using digital images to blackmail his victims into keeping quiet about his lewd, criminal and violent advances. Police say they found a video clip on the suspect’s mobile phone of a weeping 14-year-old girl. Another clip showed what appears to be the sexual assault of a woman in a car.
The woman involved in the sting that may have removed a repeat sexual offender and pedophile from the streets of Dammam positively identified him as her attacker. The suspect reportedly confessed to that crime. The case has been handed over to the Commission for Investigation and Public Prosecution.
In a similar vein, police arrested a man who was photographing women in the Eastern Province posing as a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The man turned out to be a public employee who wanted to blackmail women by threatening to make the images public.
