JEDDAH: The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the Hai'a) has confirmed that it arrested one man and two women at an event in Jeddah Saturday held by the sister of a Saudi ambassador abroad. An official from the Hai'a in Makkah said that its members entered the site in north Jeddah because the “company hosting the event was not in possession of a license to do so”. “The site had previously been given a written warning against holding functions without a license,” said Abdul Rahman Al-Jabiri, assistant regional spokesman for the Hai'a. Al-Jabiri said that Hai'a officials had noticed that the site – a store for office equipment and stationery – appeared to be hosting some sort of celebration, and later observed a foreign resident guiding women to an upper floor. “That suggested that the violation was being repeated,” he said. “The Governor of Jeddah was informed of the situation and the three organizers of the event, all of them non-Saudis, were detained and handed over to the relevant authorities.” The husband of the woman hosting the event, held in honor of their daughter and her schoolmates, said that only mothers and female relatives were in attendance, and that his wife, a sister of a Saudi ambassador abroad, was surprised at the sudden entrance of seven members of the Hai'a. “They appeared without a policeman or woman in their company,” he said. “The function hall was booked for women and children only, and when the Hai'a entered all the mothers and daughters were there without abayas or head coverings on. When my wife spoke to them one of them chastised her for not wearing an abaya and for having make-up on.” Okaz/Saudi Gazette spoke by telephone to the wife's brother, an ambassador assigned abroad, who said that he had written in a private capacity to complain about the incident. He said his brother-in-law also intended to raise a complaint with the Emir's Office.
