Here's more of the article...
“He is highly respected and above-board. Nobody believes the religious police’s version of what happened. The whole of Jeddah (the main city near Mecca) is in uproar about this. Everyone believes he is innocent and was set up,” the [senior Saudi] journalist said.
(Okay, at least he has popular support.)
Contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited in the desert kingdom where religious police, commonly known as mutaween, patrol public places in teams to enforce their brand of ultra-conservative Islam.
Usually bearded and often wielding canes, they ensure women are not harassed, sexes do not mix and shops close for prayers. They are under the command of the Saudi Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
(I'm not sure how preventing men and women from mixing is vital to promoting virtue and preventing vice. Do they truly think that "human" is a subset of "lust elemental"? Talk about bad self-esteem, since I'm sure they don't think of themselves as jinns or angels...)
Abdullah Al-Sanousi, the academic’s lawyer, told local newspapers that his client had drawn the ire of some of the Commission’s staffers for speaking at length during a training session about how important it was for them to be polite to the public. Some of the trainees also wanted revenge because they had failed the course while others were not happy with their examination results.
({blinks} They're upset...because he implored them to be polite?! Did it not occur to them that being impolite might be less than holy? Something tells me that popular support means naught to them...)
Ruzaiz is said to have received a call from a girl purporting to be one of his students who asked to meet to discuss a problem that she did not want to talk about over the phone. The professor agreed to meet at a family cafe, provided she brought her brother along as a chaperone.
(Observing propriety...Why do I get the feeling the officers won't bring up that he made sure of this?)
When he arrived, he was surprised to find the girl alone, and was promptly surrounded by religious policemen who handcuffed him and hauled him into custody. He was accused of being in a state of khulwa seclusion with an unrelated woman.
His lawyer insisted that because the two met in a public place frequented by hundreds of families, the question of khulwa, or illegal seclusion, never arose. The commission, however, insists that the family sections at coffee shops and restaurants are meant only for families and close relatives.
The professor is said to have taped a later conversation with the girl in which she admitted that she had been sent to the cafe by the religious police. The professor is relying on an appeals court to overturn the verdict. His lawyer has urged local human rights associations to back his plea for reviewing the case.
(I think we can safely say that the woman won't be assailed by anything except her conscience...Still doesn't help the policemen's moral quotient, though.)