RIYADH, 20 March 2008 — Police in the city of Tabuk have not yet identified the young woman who perished along with a male acquaintance in a car accident on Sunday following a car chase involving the moral police.
Maj. Gen. Naser Al-Arfaj, head of the Tabuk Police Department, refused to comment on the case when contacted by Arab News. He said a statement would be issued once the investigations were over.
No local families have reported any missing family members. According to reports published yesterday, investigators are checking attendance at Tabuk’s Social College for Women to see if anyone has not attended classes since the accident took place. The police had reason to believe the young woman was attending the school based on an interview with a person listed in a mobile phone recovered from the accident site.
Eyewitnesses testified to local police that they saw a patrol vehicle of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice chasing a Toyota Camry on the Tabuk-Madinah highway. The vehicle smashed into a truck while the driver was trying to escape the commission, which had taken chase after seeing the woman in the car.
So far police have arrested five people in the incident: the two commission members, two people involved with phoning in a report of an unmarried couple driving in a car together, and a young man who was listed as a contact on the deceased girl’s mobile phone, who in an interview with authorities said she lived outside of town and attended the college in Tabuk.
Sheikh Sulaiman Al-Inazi, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Tabuk, also declined to comment on the case.
One of the detained commission members had been previously arrested for his involvement in the death of Ahmed Al-Bulawi, a 50-year-old retired security guard. Al-Bulawi was mistakenly arrested by the commission for picking up an unrelated woman in his car. He died in commission custody; the commission claims he dropped dead from natural causes due to the stress of being in custody.
