Mosque worshippers who went to the aid last Friday of a woman allegedly physically assaulted by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the Hai'a) gave their testimonies to the Commission for Investigation and Prosecution on Thursday. “It's a great weight off our minds,” said one after making his official statement. “We've given our testimonies and done everything our conscience and sense of patriotism dictated.” The testimonies were given at the behest of the worshippers themselves, who had been in a mosque at sundown when they heard the 20-year-old woman's screams emanating from the next door offices of the Hai'a. The incident, reported by Saudi Gazette on April 4, began when the worshippers informed the police and officers arrived to take her to Sulaimaniya Police Station by private car. Sheikh Sulaiman Al-Enizi, the head of the Hai'a office where the woman was held, described the incident as “perfectly normal”. The woman, he said, had “run away from her family home in Jeddah and had been in Tabuk for some time”. Al-Enizi claimed the woman asked a man in Tabuk to help her run away, but that he instead reported her to the Hai'a who arrested her. He denied she was harmed, and said the screams were because she did not want to be put in police custody, but a source at King Khaled Hospital in Tabuk said her legs exhibited bruising. The woman herself said she was “outraged” at Al-Enizi's version of the story, claiming she had taken a taxi from her house to go to a tailor's shop to apply for work with the full knowledge of her mother and brother. “If a man had been with me, why didn't the Hai'a arrest him as well?” she asked. Sources said earlier this week that orders had been given for the suspension of the four Hai'a officials said to have been involved in the incident and the arrest of the man who brought the initial accusations. He has since been questioned by investigators. Saleh Al-Harbi, the spokesman for Tabuk Police, declined to comment saying that the issue was the jurisdiction of the Hai'a. Questions remain as to why the Hai'a did not immediately hand the woman over to the police, as required by law, and on Wednesday Prince Fahd Bin Sultan, the Emir of Tabuk, pledged to “get to the bottom” of the whole incident.
