The price of a coffee? 150 lashes.
Dr Muhammad ‘Ali Abu Raziza, professor at a Saudi university had a call from a woman he thought was one of his psychology students, asking to meet him in a coffee shop in Mecca. As Saudi law prohibits a man from being alone in the company of a woman who is not a relative, he checked if she would be bringing a chaperone, and was told that she was.
Dr Raziza arrives at the coffee shop, the woman is on her own, and immediately the Saudi religious police swoop, and he is arrested. Amnesty believe that Dr Raziza was set up, by the ‘Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice’, after he angered some of his students who were also members of the Committee.
Now he faces 150 lashes and months in prison.
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