Saudi sex cop case appealed

Arab News:

The high-profile case of Salman Al-Huraisi, a 28-year-old Saudi hotel security guard who died as a result of alleged beatings by two members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, has been transferred to the Cassation Court, the Kingdom’s court of appeals. A ruling is expected within a month.

Raif Badwi, a human rights advocate, has teamed up with the family’s attorney, Yahya Al-Huraisi, to appeal the lower court’s decision on Nov. 28 dropping all charges against two defendants in the murder case — both of them Commission members.

Badwi is expected to highlight the case from a human rights perspective and underscore the conclusion made by the General Investigation and Prosecution Authority (GIPA), the Kingdom’s equivalent of a district attorney’s office, which had declared the two agents culpable for Al-Huraisi’s death.

“The ruling (by the lower court) implies what I refer to as a ‘license to kill’,” Badwi told Arab News. “If the Cassation Court does not overturn the lower court’s decision and there is no intervention from higher authorities, this basically means that these people can enter anyone’s house in the name of religion, humiliate them physically and mentally, take them to a station and even kill someone and get away with it.”

The human rights activist said that he had received death threats on his cell phone after he agreed to be part of the appeal team from anonymous people who called themselves “soldiers of the two holy mosques.” “I am not going to drop this case, even if I am going to be jailed or killed for it,” Badwi said.

Three judges in a Riyadh court dropped the charges against the two commission members last month after making the members swore under oath that they had not taken part in the raid or beat the deceased. The defendants had retracted confessions made during an initial hearing.

Al-Huraisi’s home was raided after Commission members determined that liquor was being sold from the house in Riyadh’s Al-Oraija district. Over 18 agents swooped down on the house. He was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the local Commission center along with 10 family members who were in other apartments in the building. Al-Huraisi died in custody and an autopsy report concluded that he had been beaten and that this was the likely cause of death. The raid involved Commission members and police swooping in commando style on the house. The Commission members immediately destroyed the bottles of alcohol seized from the house instead of treating them as evidence of criminal activity.

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These perverts demonstrate the hypocrisy of those who find virtue in beating up suspects and no vice in lying about it. These guys are from the same group of perverts responsible for the deaths of young girls who burned to death because they would not let them leave a burning building. These disgusting thugs should be disbanded or thrown in jail. We will know that the Saudis are moving toward a true system of justice when the sex cops are band and there are no more farces like this one when a prosecution is attempted on vigilante perverts.