Riyadh // Members of Saudi Arabia’s religious police have been arrested for allegedly brutalising a young woman outside a Riyadh shopping mall, local media said on Tuesday.
A video of the young woman’s case, put online two weeks ago, led to a wave of indignation on the internet.
It purportedly shows members of the religious police chasing two women and then roughly handling one of them whose black abaya opened to reveal her leg.
The Asharq Al Awsat and Okaz dailies quoted the interior ministry as saying "the individuals implicated in this assault were arrested for interrogation".
The reports did not say how many members of the religious police were detained.
It was not clear why the religious police had been chasing the women.
The agency – officially known as the commission for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, or Mutawaa – have been accused of abuses before.
In 2013, religious policemen were arrested after their patrol car crashed into another vehicle during a chase that left two men dead.
After the latest incident, many online commentators called for the abolition of the bearded enforcers, but a large number of others defended their role.
* Agence France-Presse