Saudi police officers arrested over brutalizing woman
Several members of police have been arrested in Saudi Arabia for allegedly assaulting a young woman in front of a shopping mall in the capital, Riyadh.
According to reports in Saudi local media on Tuesday, they had chased two women for an unknown reason, then brutalized one of them earlier this month.
Witnesses filmed the incident and put it online in a move that drew people’s ire.
The Asharq al-Awsat and Okaz newspapers quoted the Saudi Interior Ministry as saying that the individuals “implicated in this assault were arrested for interrogation.”
It is not clear how many police officers have been arrested.
Saudi police are tasked with making sure that women cover themselves from head to toe in public. They also force shop owners to close their shops during prayer times.
Three years ago, two men were killed when a police patrol car crashed into another vehicle during a chase.
This as Riyadh has been harshly criticized by activist groups for mistreating women. Amnesty International has said in a report that Saudi laws deliberately “deny women basic rights.”
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive, a ban that stems from a religious fatwa imposed by the country’s Wahhabi clerics. If women get behind the wheel in the kingdom, they may be arrested, sent to court and even flogged.
The Saudi regime is also under pressure over its harsh treatment of political activists in the country.
In mid-December, the United Nations called on the regime in Riyadh to release blogger Raif Badawi, social media activist Mikhlif al-Shammari and Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh.
Amnesty International has repeatedly slammed Riyadh for its ever-increasing number of executions in the country. The kingdom has reportedly executed more than 60 people so far this year.
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