RIYADH, 5 July 2007 — The trial involving a 50-year-old Saudi woman who is suing the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice for a 2003 incident has been postponed until Sept. 1.
Umm Faisal, a mother of five, has been in a years-long process of seeking damages against the commission members who detained her, her 21-year-old daughter, her Indonesian maid and the driver.
The charge? According to Umm Faisal the men, who allegedly didn’t immediately identify themselves as officers of the commission, said her daughter wasn’t appropriately dressed and that her veil didn’t cover her eyes.
Umm Faisal is suing the commission for tarnishing her reputation and causing her emotional and financial damages.
On Monday, the court postponed the hearing until September to give the commission time to contact the Riyadh Governorate (where the original lawsuit was filed in early 2004) regarding the paperwork in the case. On Monday, no representative from the commission attended the hearing, which was another reason for the postponement.
A lower court had originally found the arresting commission member guilty and fined him SR2,000 while acquitting the other for lack of evidence. Umm Faisal — who has asked that the media not publish her full name — is suing the commission itself in the new lawsuit after finding the punishment for the one arresting officer insufficient.
“The lawsuit is based on Article 8 in the Grievance Law (the law through which citizens can being charges against the government) which states that a person may not be physically or mentally harmed during the ongoing government investigation of a case,” the woman’s attorney, Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, told Arab News. “In a conservative country like Saudi Arabia, if a Saudi woman is apprehended or questioned by the commission, her reputation is ruined. It will haunt her for decades, regardless or not if she turns out to be innocent or guilty of the charges later on.” Al-Lahem said that his client was not seeking monetary compensation. She’s pursuing the case, according to her lawyer, to pressure the commission to institute reforms.
“Whatever the outcome is, she believes she has already succeeded in delivering the message,” he said. “The message is that the commission, as a government body, should respect people’s human rights when they do their job.”
Umm Faisal described the detention as a terrifying experience. She said at one point she asked the men while they were allegedly driving recklessly through the streets of Riyadh if they were terrorists and if she, her daughter, her maid and her driver were being kidnapped.
She said the men eventually identified themselves as commission members. Later the men called friends of Umm Faisal to come pick them up and let them on the side of a Riyadh street.
