The Saudi sex cops

Washington Post:

Saudi human rights lawyer Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem said he had been waiting years for a case like this: A woman and her daughter, both accused of promiscuity, were followed by the morals police as they left a private residence on the outskirts of the capital.

The police, who enforce adherence to Saudi Arabia's strict religious laws, beat up the women's driver and drove off with them locked in the back of the car. When the car broke down half an hour later, the officers abandoned them in the stranded vehicle.

The police assumed that the women had been visiting male friends. But the two had been at the home of female relatives. And unlike the thousands who had previously been intimidated into dropping their grievances, they insisted on taking their kidnappers to court. The case, which goes to trial next week, will give Lahem a chance to finally confront the powerful morals police, whom he considers the country's worst human rights offenders.

Lahem, a 35-year-old father of two, contends that the police oppress people in the name of religion and act as if the law doesn't apply to them. He wants to prove them wrong.

"If we win this case, it will have more of an impact than a dozen lectures or newspaper articles," he said. "It will send a powerful message to them, and to the public, who view men of the cloth as untouchable. It will prove that nobody is above the rule of law."

Over the past three years, Lahem has taken on the country's most controversial and sensitive cases and turned them into high-profile indictments of the justice system. He has been thrown in jail several times and banned from traveling abroad. But he continues to fight what he considers an antiquated judiciary, out of step with basic human rights.

Saudi Arabia's legal system is based primarily on the principles of sharia, laws derived from Islam's holy book, the Koran, and on the Sunna, examples from the life of its prophet, Muhammad. Saudi judges follow the official Wahhabi doctrine, the most puritanical and conservative interpretation of Islam, and have wide discretion in handing down sentences.

Lahem's latest client is a 19-year-old woman who was in a car with a male friend when she was kidnapped and gang-raped by seven men. In November, four of the men received prison sentences ranging from one to five years and 80 to 1,000 lashes, and three are awaiting sentencing.

The rape victim was sentenced to 90 lashes for having been with a male friend, which is illegal in this strictly segregated country.

Lahem, a slight, fragile-looking man, said he took the case because he was so incensed by that verdict.

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He took the case of a high school chemistry teacher, Mohammad al-Harbi, who was sentenced last year to 40 months in prison and 750 lashes for "trying to sow doubt" among his students by speaking positively about Judaism and Christianity. King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz pardoned him.

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Despite laws in place since 2002 protecting suspects' rights to legal counsel and requiring public trials, most trials are held in secret, without defense lawyers.

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He is currently representing Mansour al-Timani and his wife, Fatima, a couple with two children who suddenly found themselves forcibly divorced. The 34-year-old wife's half brothers sued to void the marriage, claiming that the husband had hidden his inferior tribal lineage. The judge ruled in their favor.

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After the marriage was declared void, the couple's cohabitation became illegal, and police took Fatima from their home. She was given the choice of living with her brothers, moving to a women's shelter or going to prison. She told Lahem she did not feel she would be out of her brothers' reach in a shelter and has been in prison with her year-old son since July.

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Lahem is a very courageous man. His fight against the religious sex police is one to be watched. I have often argued that Shari'a law should be banned and certainly these cases are strong arguments for that point of view. It will take more courage for the Saudis to abandon this abominable system where cruel and unusual punishment is the usual. The story did not mention one of the most heinous acts of the sex police who caused the deaths of 40 or more girls because tehy would not let them leave a burning building. If these idiots think that was God's will, their should be a special place in hell for them.