A man convicted of impersonating a military officer and exhibiting immoral behavior in a Bluetooth video last month was lashed in a public square on Friday. The man, who was sentenced to one year in prison and 200 lashes of the whip, also faced new charges from the attorney general on Saturday of “homosexuality and imitating females”. The accused has two weeks to respond to the accusations. Saudi Gazette last month reported police in Jeddah as saying on March 8 that they had “recently” detained a 27-year-old Saudi man for impersonating a military officer after he appeared on a Bluetooth recording dressed in uniform and performing “acts improper and against Islamic teachings”. The video circulated on the Internet and mobile telephones and the individual who appeared in it was arrested along with another person whose voice is heard and is believed to have played the role of cameraman and provided the lieutenant's uniform. Following the March 9 sentence, which included a fine of 5,000 riyals, sources said the same individual had appeared before a Jeddah court in a previous incident of a similar nature but that his name was subsequently included on the list of offenders pardoned to mark the return of Crown Prince Sultan to the Kingdom at the end of last year. That case, according to the sources, involved him impersonating women, and the court requested that his father “take him to specialist doctors for treatment”. The judge also ordered the accused to memorize parts of the Qur'an.
