RIYADH, 28 April 2008 — An undercover Saudi intelligence officer filed an official complaint yesterday at the Governorate of Riyadh for allegedly being sworn at, humiliated and offended by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice while he was accompanied by his friends at the Thumama desert area early Thursday morning.
The officer alleges that he and his friends were accused of being “scum” as well as “not being brought up in a proper way” when he tried to interfere to prevent one of his colleagues from being beaten.
“We were in Thumama at around 3 a.m., Thursday morning, having fun and joking around, when one of us spotted a commission jeep pass by,” the officer, who requested anonymity, told Arab News.
He said he and his four colleagues were just like any other guys going to Thumama to vent out on a weekend night without the intention of harming any families or looking for trouble.
“A colleague said in a loud voice ‘guys, it’s the Haya’a (commission)!’” he continued. “But we were doing nothing wrong. We did not even have soda pop bottles or play any loud music for them to consider that we were doing something wrong.”
According to the officer, the commission members pulled up in a off-road vehicle bearing the commission’s logo. One commission member accused one of the campers of calling them dogs, then picked out the youngest member of the group, Rami Al-Amri, 18, and began slapping him.
“One of the men said: ‘I’ll teach you who the Haya’a is. We are the government’,” Al-Amri told Arab News. The commission members allegedly proceeded to verbally abuse the campers and impugn their character. Al-Amri claimed that the commission member that was being physically abusive threatened to jail him for three months.
The other members of the commission allegedly restrained the intelligence officer and “did not even give me a chance to identify myself,” he added.
According to the five young men, the police officer who accompanied the commission members did nothing to end the situation. In fact, they said, he stood there watching. Commission members are often escorted by police officers who are supposed to protect them from attacks and be in charge of processing arrested moral-crime suspects.
The intelligence officer said eventually two more commission vehicles arrived at the scene. At one point there were about 10 commission members surrounding five young Saudis. According to the intelligence officer, one of the commission members ordered Al-Amri to kiss the forehead of the abusive officer in a bid to be released. Despite already being humiliated, he had no choice.
“I think he enjoyed it. He even tilted his head toward me when I got closer,” Al-Amri said.
After leaving them, the group of five young men decided to go to a nearby police station to file an official complaint. They said the Thumama police station refused to accept their complaints. The officer said that Al-Amri had to go to a local hospital to be treated for facial abrasions and when they requested a medical report from the hospital to be used as evidence, the hospital refused.
Arab News obtained a copy of the official complaint the men have filed directly to the Riyadh Governorate.
One of the young men said he used to think that the media exaggerate abuses of authority by commission members. Not anymore, he says.
“I have family members who work at the commission,” he said. “And I often pay visits to their centers. I never used to believe newspaper reports when they talk about their mistakes on the field until after I saw it with my own eyes.”
All the five young men say they had been traumatized by the experience and have doubts about the role-model status the commission is supposed to have in Saudi society.
“If we used to believe that these people’s job was to spread righteousness in society, we now think the opposite,” said one of the men.
“I now hate mutawwas,” said another. The intelligent officer intends to also file his case with Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Commission. He said he would not give in and not rest until his dignity was restored after being verbally abused by the commission members.
“I will take it all the way to the king if I have to,” he said.
