Arab News reports that the Saudi human rights organization will be protesting the arrest of a woman by religious police for the ‘crime’ of having a cup of coffee with a work colleague at a local Starbucks. According to the woman’s statement, the religious police not only behaved reprehensibly, but went way outside their permitted scope of activity.

Starbucks and the religious police have a bit of a history. When the company first arrived, its logo of a mermaid caused some consternation because some thought they could see breasts beneath all that hair. To avoid problems, Starbucks came up with another logo, a seahorse. [I do wonder how the police reacted when they learned that male seahorses give birth! Talk about 'gender bending'!!] By 2003, however, the mermaid was back on the signs, cups, and napkins. What happened to occasion that, I haven’t a clue.

Saudi Human Rights Official Slams Vice Cops in Yara Case
Raid Qusti, Arab News

RIYADH — The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), Saudi Arabia’s non-governmental rights body, will address the Governorate of Riyadh regarding Yara, a 36-year-old Jeddah-based businesswoman who was apprehended by the religious police and thrown in Al-Malaz Prison on Monday.

Yara said she endured a humiliating and frightening hours-long ordeal that began with her arrest by a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice for having coffee with an unrelated man in a Starbucks cafe in Riyadh.

“We have visited Yara at home and took her official complaint,” NSHR member Al-Jawhara Al-Angari told Arab News yesterday. “The complaint will be sent to the main office in Riyadh where further notices from our part will be added. It will then be sent to the Governorate of Riyadh.”
…