Open Absurdity

Saudi woman's cafe plight highlights rights problems

The English-language Arab News quoted a 40-year-old financial consultant, named only as Yara, as saying she was arrested on Monday by members of the powerful Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

She said she was holding a business meeting with the man in a branch of Starbucks in Riyadh, in a section reserved for families. Saudi law requires that unrelated men and women be segregated in public.

Yara said she was taken to a Riyadh prison, strip-searched and forced to sign a confession to having been caught alone with a unrelated man -- an illegal act in the kingdom which enforces a strict Islamic moral code.

"I had no other choice" but to sign, said the married mother of three. "I was scared for my life ... I was afraid that they would abuse me or do something to me."

She said the religious police, known as the Muttawa, released her several hours later after her husband, Hatim, intervened.