Man jailed 4 months, to be lashed 70 times for hugging woman

A court in Saudi Arabia sentenced a local man to four months in prison and ordered him lashed 70 times after he was caught hugging a girl near the Grand Mosque in Makkah, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Members of the Gulf Kingdom’s feared religious police were on a routine patrol near the Grand Mosque, the world’s largest Islamic site, when they saw the 52-year-old man hugging the girl, 24, Kabar Arabic language daily said.

When they arrested him before hundreds of visitors to the mosque, the man claimed the girl was his fiancée, it said.

He later told the members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice that he was helping the girl after she slipped down.

“The court found the man guilty after the girl confessed to having a relationship with him…police also found obscene films and texts to women in his mobile phone,” the paper said.