Thread: Starbucks leads to strip-search for Saudi woman

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Starbucks leads to strip-search for Saudi woman

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 21:13:00 02/05/2008

RIYADH -- 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.

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

Saudi Arabia's 5,000-strong religious police have been investigated over a number of deaths that occurred while they raided homes or kept people in custody.

The interior ministry issued a decree in May 2006 aimed at reining in the Muttawa by requiring them not to interrogate detained suspects, as they had previously done, but to hand them over to the regular police instead.

A United Nations report released on Friday said that women in the conservative Muslim state are the victims of systematic and pervasive discrimination across all aspects of social life.

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News from the bizarro world of Islam. I edited this because for some reason a bunch of other stuff was quoted that had nothing to do w/the article.

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.

Even their own people are getting sick of this outrageous and severe view of the world.

I truly feel sorry for them, but then again, this is what happens when you do not have the seperation of church and state, as well as an apostate religion running rampant in a country. I will pray for these people, how sad they cannot conduct normal lives.

Saudi Arabia is where the Bin ladens rule and also where the terror originated . Where 14 of the 911 came from and one of our governmennts favorite nations .

Then we are suppose to turn our heads and minds to all the consipracy theories going around .

Not to speak of all the hidden nukes inside this nation planted years ago by the Russians according to former intelegence officials , we have nukes inside Russia also ] . Osama may have the locations of these hidden nukes .

How do we know what the heck to believe ?

I believe there is a lot of bad going on out there, and to be honest, other than being vigilant as possible as American citzens, it is out of our hands, but, good news, it is in God's hands and nothing is beyond His knowledge and ability.

I trust that until His timing is ready for something to happen, He will keep our enemies at bay, although that does not mean we can just sit back and be lazy or ignorant about things (some seem to think that having 100% faith, means you simply do nothing at all).

Originally Posted by AmericanElizabeth

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.

Even their own people are getting sick of this outrageous and severe view of the world.

I truly feel sorry for them, but then again, this is what happens when you do not have the seperation of church and state, as well as an apostate religion running rampant in a country. I will pray for these people, how sad they cannot conduct normal lives.

How can a nation founded on the laws of the judio-christian religion where all leaders swear on the Holy Bible seperate it's state from it's religion ? We are bound by these laws .

Freedom of religion is the key to a democracy, NOT FREEDOM FROM religion . We are free to choose our religion, but not free to break the laws that govern our society that were based on it .

As long as we stayed close to the principles and morals of the above, we stayed strong, free and prospered . Every time we changed to satisfy the few we went down further as a nation .

Originally Posted by AmericanElizabeth

I believe there is a lot of bad going on out there, and to be honest, other than being vigilant as possible as American citzens, it is out of our hands, but, good news, it is in God's hands and nothing is beyond His knowledge and ability.

I trust that until His timing is ready for something to happen, He will keep our enemies at bay, although that does not mean we can just sit back and be lazy or ignorant about things (some seem to think that having 100% faith, means you simply do nothing at all).

I feel the same way you do on this subject .

NOamNASTY, I firmly believe that although we have governed based on our strong Christian beginings, and would never want us to seperate from that (although it has been slowy degrading and look where it has gotten this country!...), I do believe that the way we govern is simple fairness based on a lot of common sense.

The other side of that is, Judeo-Christian beliefs are that the individual is accountable to God, and not one person or government has the right to intervene in their personal (but not criminal) immorality. If a woman had an affair, her husband can surely dovirce her, but our courts and government cannot punish her beyond that, that is left for God to do.

This point is where Islam diverges from us, they feel that one cannot be trusted to be personally accountable to God, they feel they (their governments) must enforce each individuals morality. God gives us the choice to choose Him, or not, and our eternity is based on that, and we have no one else to blame but ourselves if we fail in that choice.

I say Islam is apostate, and not right because it does not allow for freedom of anything, that is the opposite of God (and you know what I mean).

More info on this story:

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly ... 05,00.html

American Woman Boasted of Saudi Freedoms To Bush Brother Before Arrest at Starbucks

Thursday , February 07, 2008
By Sonia Verma

FC1
ADVERTISEMENT

Two weeks before Yara, an American businesswoman, was arrested by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at Starbucks, she said she strolled past the very same cafe with another businessman: Neil Bush.

Bush, President George W. Bush's younger brother and CEO of the education software company Ignite!, was in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, speaking at an economic forum hosted by King Abdullah for hundreds of influential business leaders.

Yara, who does not want her last name revealed because of safety concerns, is a managing partner at a Saudi financial company. She went to hear Bush speak, and she said she invited him later to tour her company's offices, to give him a sense of what life was really like for women living in the capital.

"I was boasting about Riyadh, telling him it doesn't deserve its bad reputation," she said. "I told him I never experienced any harassment. I'd had no trouble as a woman. It was business as usual."

But on Monday, Yara learned that she had been wrong. She was thrown in jail, strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the kingdom's "Mutaween" police.

"When I was arrested, it was like going through an avalanche," she said. "All of my beliefs were completely destroyed."

Yara's crime: sitting with a male business partner in the "family-only" section of the Starbucks -- the only area of the café where women and men can sit together. In Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.

Yara, who was born in Tripoli, Libya, to Jordanian parents, grew up in Salt Lake City. She moved to Saudi Arabia eight years ago with her husband, a prominent businessman.

The 37-year-old mother of three said she had an "all-American" upbringing in Utah and lived most of her life in the U.S. before moving to Riyadh.

She described herself as secular, and apolitical. "I am anti-political," she said. "I have never advocated for anything in my life."

She said she made a point of wearing an abaya and a headscarf, like most Saudi women, "out of cultural respect."

"I observed the rules and tried not to stand out in business settings," she said.

But on Monday, when the power failed in her company's offices, Yara and her male colleagues decided to use a nearby Starbucks, which has wireless Internet, as a temporary workspace.

She settled into a booth with a male colleague and opened her laptop. Moments later, she was arrested.

"Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked, 'Why are you here together?' I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin," Yara recalled.

The men were from Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a 10,000-strong police force charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayer times.

Yara said they grabbed her mobile phone and pushed her into a taxi bound for Riyadh's main prison. There she was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint confessions of guilt.

Later, she was made to stand before a judge who condemned her behavior, telling her she would "burn in hell."

She said she spent hours in a filthy prison cell with dozens of other women who had been arrested by the religious police, before her husband used his political connections to secure her release.

She has since vowed to remain in Saudi Arabia and continue working, but she says she will never return to Riyadh and now travels with a bodyguard.

And her family is furious that the American Embassy hasn't done more to support her.

An embassy official said her case was being treated as "an internal Saudi matter" and would not offer further comment.

Starbucks was waiting to learn more about the facts surrounding the incident, a company spokesman said.

“Starbucks was very concerned by reports that a customer was asked to leave one of our stores and arrested,â€

Look who's jealous


Bush seems to like the Saudies, so I guess we should too.

Great pictures jp of Bush and the shiek making out. JUST IN TIME FOR VALENTINES DAY!