Cairo: A man has appeared in a video feeding a camel with A SR500 bill, an act that sparked outrage and led to his arrest.
In the footage, the man can be seen offering the note to the animal that apparently took it for food and quickly munched it.
In response, the Saudi police said the man was later arrested in Al Dawadmi governorate, north east of Riyadh, and accused him of deliberately damaging a banknote and publicising the illegal act in a video clip.
The kingdom’s public security directorate posted a garbled video of the act and the man after his arrest handcuffed behind the back. He was referred to public prosecution.
Under Saudi law, tearing up banknotes, harming or distorting their features are punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and fines up to SR10,000.
The incident came shortly after social media circulated images allegedly of another man in the Saudi city of Al Khobar buying a pricy necklace for his camel.
The pictures display a Cartier gift inside the young man’s car before it is purportedly placed around the camel’s necklace.
Camels are a popular animal closely linked to heritage in Saudi Arabia. The animal has long been dubbed as the “ship of the desert”, being the lifeline for desert dwellers.
Saudi Arabia has designated 2024 as the Year of Camels, taking the shape of diverse programmes to boost national efforts to develop the camel sector.
In recent years, the camel business has remarkably grown in the kingdom. There are around 1.8 million camels with a market value of over SR50 billion in Saudi Arabia, according to official figures.
The kingdom annually hosts the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, one of the world’s largest in the field.
