year-old man jumped from the third-floor window of an apartment while allegedly trying to avoid arrest by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Adama District, Dammam Tuesday night. The Commission raided the apartment for running a prostitution ring, a Commission press statement said. Eastern Province spokesman colonel Yousef Al-Qahtani said the police didn't take part in the raid and the investigation is under way. “The man watched the Commission's agents inside the apartment building through a surveillance camera system,” he said. He confirmed the arrest of three African women and an Arab man inside the apartment. “No commission's agent was detained, but their statements were taken” Col. Al-Qahtani said. “It was an act of fate. The Commission's agents were just doing their job according to official instructions given to them,” he said. In an official statement of the Commission's branch in the Eastern Province, the man had jumped from an apartment window in the third floor before the agents raided the “prostitution den”. The Commission received tip-offs of a suspected apartment frequently visited by young men at late night hours prompting the Commission to have it watched in line with regulations, the statement said. Close monitoring of the apartment raised immediate security and moral concerns, the statement said. Armed with an official raid and arrest warrant, the Commission conducted a forced entry into the apartment, it added. The Commission said that the man jumped from the window when alerted to the presence of the Commission inside the building through a surveillance monitoring system inside the apartment, which contributed to the death of the man. The man would not have jumped had the system not been installed, the statement reasoned. The man, who operated the system, was arrested. The Commission said that the man died a few hours later in the hospital. But contradictory to the Commission's statement, a source at the Dammam Health Department said that the man died when he was being transferred to Dammam Central Hospital. The Commission's statement said that they reported the incident to the Red Crescent to attend the man as they continued their raid, arresting a foreign man believed to be a pimp and three foreign women. Forensic evidence was collected from the scene. Eyewitness Abdullah Sahari, resident of the neighborhood, said the victim was a government employee and a former resident of the neighborhood. “He used to frequently visit the apartment. We didn't know whether he was renting it,” Sahari testified. __
