RIYADH, 2 September 2007 — The trial involving a 50-year-old Saudi woman who is suing the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice over a 2003 incident has been postponed for the second time after a representative from the commission failed to gather legal documents in the hearing at the Court of Grievances in Riyadh yesterday.
According to Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, the attorney representing Umm Faisal who has asked the media not to publish her name, the judge has postponed the trial to Sept. 18. “The attorney representing the commission asked the judge for more time to gather legal documents from various government departments,” Al-Lahem said. “He told the judge the time given to him was not enough.”
During the initial hearing set for July 2, no representative from the commission appeared at the Grievances Court and hence the trial was postponed to Sept. 1.
Al-Lahem said the judge had asked him to list all the financial and emotional damages his client had endured due to the incident in 2003 in one detailed sheet.
He said the Saudi mother was traumatized by the incident and that her reputation had been ruined, noting the fact that suspicion toward a Saudi woman who is detained by the commission could haunt her for the rest of her life, even if she was later proved innocent.
The attorney said that the lawsuit was not against members of the commission who detained Umm Faisal and her family members but against the government body in whole for allegedly committing human rights violations and for damages endured by her because of the detention.
Umm Faisal, a mother of five, has been in a yearslong process of seeking damages against the commission who detained her, her 21-year-old daughter, her Indonesian maid and her driver.
According to Umm Faisal, the men said her daughter wasn’t appropriately dressed and that her veil did not cover her eyes as they came out of an amusement park.
Umm Faisal described the detention as a horrifying experience. She said at one point she suspected the men, who allegedly did not identify themselves as commission officers while they got in her car and drove recklessly through the streets of Riyadh, if they were terrorists and if she, her daughter and her driver were being kidnapped.
Her GMC Suburban was damaged when the vehicle crashed into a wall during the reckless driving by the commission member. She said the men eventually identified themselves as commission members and called relatives of Umm Faisal to pick them up. They left them in the car on the side of a street.
A lower court had found one of the commission officers guilty and fined him SR2,000 and acquitted the other for lack of evidence. Umm Faisal is suing the commission itself in the new lawsuit after finding the punishment for the officer insufficient.
“Whatever the outcome is, she believes she has succeeded in delivering the message,” Al-Lahem said. “The message is that the commission, as a government body, should respect people’s rights when they do their job.”
