The Commission forPromotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Hai'a) arrested an Arab man Saturday on accusations of practicing “magic, sorcery and swindling.” Hai'a spokesman in Madina Bandar Al-Rubeish said the man claimed to have the power to provoke divorces and “make men emotionally attached to their wives” through manipulation of “devils and magic” for sums of up to SR10,000. The Hai'a conducted three days of surveillance and carried out the arrest as the man was engaged in an “act of magic” on behalf of a female client who wanted to make her husband divorce his second wife. The woman had reportedly paid SR6,000 for the service. According to Al-Rubeish, the accused was found in the possession of “magic talismans bound up in a strange fashion” with the phrase “irrevocable divorce” written on them numerous times, as well as other bits of “incomprehensible paper”.
