This report from Reuters is carried by Khaleej Times from Dubai. It notes that yet-to-be-made public guidelines from the Saudi Ministry of the Interior takes away from the religious police its power to detain suspects. It also prevents them from extracting confessions and will order inspections of all Commission headquarters to ensure that they hold no detainees.

Reuters usually gets the story right in Saudi Arabia, so I believe that the new guidelines have been issued, if not announced. This denotes another market restriction on the authority of the religious police and comes in response to reports of abuse that now find them involved in several criminal and civil court cases.

Saudi takes steps to curb morality police powers

RIYADH (Reuters) – The Saudi Interior Ministry has issued guidelines banning morality police from detaining suspects, after recent deaths in their custody raised questions about the role of the controversial force.

Newspapers reported on Friday and Saturday that the order, which has been distributed to state prosecutors, includes an explicit ban on extracting confessions and inspections of morality police offices to ensure no one is being held there.

The order follows previous efforts to regulate the activities of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, including a royal decree last year that they must deliver suspects to Interior Ministry police officers.

A source close to the affair told Reuters that this week’s order was not intended to be made public. Recent cases have caused embarrassment to the force, which has wide powers to enforce bans on drugs, alcohol and prostitution.

Saudi critics say the body, whose members intervene to stop unrelated men and women from mixing in public and sometimes interrogate people to check if their beliefs fit with Saudi Arabia’s Islamic orthodoxy, is an affront to civil rights.

…Okaz newspaper said on Saturday two members of the body have been sacked for questioning an Austrian pilgrim in Medina after the pilgrim filed a complaint with a government rights body.