British man beaten by 'religious police' in Saudi Arabia for using women-only queue
Video posted on YouTube appears to show a member of Saudi Arabia's religious police attack British resident of Riyadh after he paid at a women-only cash de

September 1, 2014
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/11068152/British-man-beaten-by-religious-police-in-Saudi-Arabia-for-using-women-only-queue.html

A British businessman living in Saudi Arabia was set upon and beaten up by members of the country’s religious police after using a women-only cash till with his wife at a local supermarket.
Peter Howarth-Lees, who is married to a Saudi woman, was knocked to the ground and kicked by three members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, known as the Mutawa, who followed the couple out of the shop.
“While I was on the ground all three of them proceeded to kick me repeatedly in the head and back and then one of them stamped hard on my face,” he said in http://saudijeans.tumblr.com/post/96352571630/statement-from-british-man-attacked-by-saudi-religious a statement to a local website. “On seeing this, my wife got out of the car and somehow managed to push them off me and I managed to stand up.” His wife was kicked in the stomach.
In a video which circulated online he is heard shouting: “That's my wife, how dare you!
Women have only recently been allowed to work as supermarket cashiers, and Mr Howarth-Lees’s ordeal seems to have been triggered by confusion over the rules, which are intended to maintain the kingdom’s policies on sex segregation.
He says he was directed to the women cashiers as part of a couple, but the Mutawa objected to him handing over a credit card.
They tussled with him in front of a crowd of shoppers, and then followed him to his car shouting abuse and started taking photographs. When he took a photograph of them in return they attacked him.
The police arrived and refused to intervene, before eventually a car sent by the British Embassy arrived and drove the couple away.
Mr Howarth-Lees told The Telegraph that he had been contacted by the head of the Mutawa, who had ordered an investigation.
“We don’t have to fight the case because they have already admitted their people are at fault,” he said. “It will be left up to us as to how we play it.”
He said he did not blame the government or the system in Saudi Arabia, where he was “proud to live”. “This sort of thing happens to people but it is quite isolated,” he said. “There are rogue elements in police forces everywhere, including the United States and Britain too.”
More leeway to social rules is often given in upmarket areas where western expatriates live.
“This is a high-end supermarket in probably the most exclusive part of Riyadh,” Mr Howarth-Lees said.