Saudis Arrest, Strip Search Woman for Having a Business Meeting With a Man

Posted by Lucinda Marshall, Feminist Peace Network at 3:17 PM on February 5, 2008.

Doesn't it give you a warm fuzzy feeling that these misogynist thugs are our allies?

"A businesswoman was detained and strip-searched by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting in a Starbucks coffee shop with an unrelated man, taboo in the country.

The English-language Arab News today quoted a 40-year-old financial consultant, named only as Yara, as saying she was arrested 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.

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.

"I look at this as if she had been kidnapped by thugs," said Hatim.

The paper said the man with whom Yara had coffee, an unnamed Syrian financial analyst, was also arrested and remains in custody."

Tagged as: sexism, saudi arabia

Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network. Her work has been published in numerous publications in the U.S. and abroad including, Counterpunch, AlterNet, Dissident Voice, Off Our Backs, the Progressive, Countercurrents, Z Magazine, Common Dreams, In These Times and Information Clearinghouse. She also blogs at WIMN Online and writes a monthly column for the Louisville Eccentric Observer.