Saudi vice cops kill man for selling alcohol

Another lovely story from our favorite "moderate" kingdom:

RIYADH, 18 July 2007 — The father of the Saudi young man who was allegedly beaten to death when members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice stormed his house in late May in the capital on the suspicion of his son selling alcohol has demanded execution of the persons responsible for his death.

“I want execution. And I do not want just one person executed, but the three persons I saw beating up my son in the commission center that day,” Muhammad Al-Huraisi, 73, told Arab News. “This is what I officially signed when members of the General Investigation and Prosecution Authority (GIPA) asked me what I sought when I was held up there.”

The father described how the commission members swooped into his house commando style. “Two separate teams had arrived,” he said. “They entered the house from the roof after they jumped from the two adjacent buildings.”

“’Allahu Akbar… We have overcome the deviants!’ was what they yelled out when they got into the house,” he added.

He said that he had replaced five of the doors the commission members broke down to enter the rooms in the house.

Abu Ali said that had authorities simply showed up with a warrant for the arrest of his son, he would have turned him over immediately and peacefully. “Instead, they raided the place, never showed a piece of paper,” he said, adding that the commission members also destroyed the bottles inside the house instead of collecting them as evidence.

A brother of the deceased said he knew that Salman was dealing in liquor.

“Salman kept telling me that he was fed up of being poor and wanted to get more money,” he said. “He would constantly complain about the SR1,500 he got from working as a security guard.”

Saudis can rest well knowing that they have morality police, ready to kill in defense of their whims.