(SF)

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh, according to a report in The Times of London on Thursday.

Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's "Mutaween" police, The Times reported.

"Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked 'Why are you here together?'. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin," recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.

The men were from Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.

Yara says she was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her "crime," the Times reported.

Yara was visited this week by officials from the American Embassy, who promised they would file a report.

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Put me on wheels and I'll turn tricks.

Clever? Nah, I ran out of that years ago. But if you find this, let me know, k?
"The road goes ever on..." ~ Tolkien

In memory of my friend skip...
Go then, there are other worlds than these

And they probably think of themselves as civilized.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

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Eudaimonia

I would agree if she had been arrested ... and then turned over to the American Embassy for deportation. Then I could understand that she had crossed a boundry and was no longer welcome.

But that didn't happen. She was strip searched ... bruised ... and an American citizen ... not Saudi. Was she stripped to find illegal coffee grounds? No, they were just dirty old men getting their jollies. Bruised by being hit accidently with a coffee cup. Nope. She was beat by men that probably are afraid of going after anyone that could hit back. That's just uncivilized behavior. Sorry, but that's how I feel.

That's "religious freedom" for you.

OK, actually, it's religious freedom, without the quotes for the Wahhabis.

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On the kinkometer, my kink measures as a sine wave.

We Americans seen to think that the world thinks and behaves like we do. They don't. She was in Saudi Arabia a counry that puts little value on women. They don't treat woman as equal to men. They don't treat women as we do. If a woman is raped there she is at fault and will be punished. There is no religious freedom there no matter what they may say and we must understand this when we visit there. To them there is only one way and it is their way. As much as we don't understsnd them they don't understand us. I have often wondered what Saudi Arabia would be like without our oil money.

and then they will forget all about her

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