Manama: Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice on Tuesday removed four of its staff from the Riyadh office after it found them guilty of assaulting a British national and his Saudi wife.
The Commission also apologised to the couple about the incident and insisted that the aggressors did not represent its values, mission and objectives.
In a statement, the Commission said that it launched an investigation into the incident that occurred on Friday evening in a shopping mall in the capital Riyadh.
A video clip of the dramatic altercation and accounts by the Commission members and witnesses were used to identify the people involved and determine their role and responsibilities in the events, the statement said.
The investigation concluded that the video clip was genuine and that the people in it were members of the Commission.
It also found out that the man who pounced on the British national as could be seen in the video was the head of the Commission team, it added.
The statement said that the incident was related to acts that were not within the Commission team’s prerogatives.
Reports late on Friday said that the Briton was approached by the members of the Commission when he took a check-out at a supermarket reserved for women and families.
When they asked him about his presence in the special lane, he answered that he was with his wife and had the right to use it.
However, the Commission members felt frustrated by the answer and followed the couple until they reached their car outside the mall where they had a physical altercation.
“The Commission members should not have approached him as such a case was for the supermarket security and management to handle,” the statement said. “They should have kept their composure and dealt with the situation calmly by taking down the plate numbers of the car, instead of escalating it.”
The Commission blamed its members for trying to alter the facts, making contrasting statements about who attacked the Briton.
“The President of the Commission took the decision to remove the four members from the Riyadh office and move them to other branches where they will be doing only office work,” the statement said. “The Commission apologises to the resident and to his wife and considers the attitudes of the members as individual behaviour that do not represent the spirit of the Commission.”
