Officer gets six years for drugs, blackmail

A Saudi court sentenced a police officer to six years in prison and ordered him lashed 500 times with the whip for possessing drugs and forcing a local woman to sleep with him, press reports said on Monday.

 

The court in the western town of Taif also fined the unnamed officer SR300,000 ($80,000) after he was seized with the woman at a rented apartment, where a small amount of hashish was also found, Sabq said.

 

The woman, who was also not identified, had complained to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Saudi Arabia’s religious police, that the officer had blackmailed her to sleep with him after threatening to publicize some pictures of her body.

 

“Commission members raided the apartment at the time given by the woman and caught the officer red handed,” the paper said.