Saudi Arabia's religious police detained and strip-searched a woman for sitting in a Starbucks coffeeshop with a male work colleague who is not a member of her family, Arab News reported on Tuesday.
The 40-year-old financial consultant, named only as Yara, told the paper she was arrested on Monday by members of the powerful Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. She was holding a business meeting with the man in a branch of Starbucks in Riyadh, in a section reserved for families as is the rule in Saudi Arabia where unrelated members of the opposite sex are segregated in public, she said.
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.
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