The Appeals Court in Makkah has overturned the conviction of a man accused by his mother-in-law of “harassing” two of her daughters and “damaging their reputations” by publishing photographs of them on the internet site Facebook. The 32-year-old man had been sentenced to three months in prison and 45 lashes of the whip by the District Court in Makkah following a 75-day investigation conducted by the Commission for Investigation and Prosecution based on the mother-in-law's complaint, but the Appeals Court overruled the sentence based on evidence brought by the defendant's lawyer, Ibrahim Zamzami. “The whole case was fabricated, and based on the evidence of printed images without any investigation conducted into the original online source of those images,” Zamzami said. “These cases involving technology should be looked into by specialist authorities and not simply rely on printed paper evidence.”
