Police have arrested a woman and her male friend on charges of murdering her husband in Riyadh's Al-Mahdiya area.

Police said the Syrian woman had initially attempted to mislead them by claiming that three masked men killed her Saudi husband during a picnic.

At a news conference, Brig. Gen. Nasser bin Saeed Al-Qahtani, Riyadh police spokesman, described the events leading up to the arrest of the woman and her friend, who is also Syrian.

"At 5:15 on Saturday afternoon the operations room at the security patrol department received a report from a citizen saying that a Syrian woman had claimed three masked men tried to take money from her husband and then attacked him while she was out picnicking with him in a desert area in Riyadh."

The report said that, according to the woman, the men shot her husband after he refused to give them money, and then ran away.

Al-Qahtani said that criminal investigation and forensics experts, with the Investigation and Public Prosecutions Bureau, moved immediately to the crime scene to probe the wife's claims.

The police found that the man had died from several shots to the head, neck, and limbs, but did not find any evidence matching the story of the woman.

Police officers then suspected the woman of being involved in the crime. After detaining and interrogating her, the woman confessed that she had planned to kill her husband with the assistance of the male friend with whom she was having a relationship.

She gave her friend a gun that belonged to her husband and then planned to go out on a picnic. She told her friend to arrive at the picnic spot and shoot her husband.

The woman's male friend later turned himself in, accompanied by his father. He confessed to killing the man and showed them where he had hidden the murder weapon.