Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister has defended the kingdom's controversial "religious police" after the deaths of two Saudis in custody and accused media of exaggerating the case, a newspaper said on Monday.
The religious police has wide powers in Saudi Arabia to enforce bans on drugs, alcohol and prostitution as well as to stop unrelated men and women from mixing. But the force, which hard-line clerics say is central to Saudi Arabia's austere form of Sunni Islam, has come under increasing criticism from newspapers and rights activists for overzealous behaviour and lack of clear guidelines.
Over the last month a 50-year-old man died of a heart attack while in custody in the desert town of Tabuk and a 28-year-old man died in Riyadh amid accusations by his family that he was beaten to death for suspected consumption of alcohol.
"Initial investigations show that commission members had nothing to do with their deaths ... The court will decide on the matter according to the investigation," Prince Nayef was quoted as saying in the English-language Arab News. The paper said the prince, a close ally of the autonomous body, "called on journalists and people in the media not to be hasty and 'not blow up' mistakes by government bodies."
The Interior Ministry has rejected calls to disband the force, whose members wear distinctive long beards, loose headscarves and white robes that stop above the ankles in what they consider to be an imitation of early Muslims.
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