Saudi sex braggart gets five years in jail, 1,000 lashes

Saudi man who tells of colorful love life - gets five years in prison and 1,000 lashes. It was thought he might be given 20 years in jail and 12,000 lashes [a few whips later].

RIYADH (AFP) — A Saudi man whose televised boasts about his sex life outraged the country's conservatives was sentenced to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes on Wednesday, his lawyer said.

Mazen Abdul Jawad, a 32-year-old airline sales clerk, was convicted by a Jeddah court on Sharia law-based charges relating to immoral behaviour, Sulaiman al-Jimaie told AFP.

Three friends who appeared on the show with him were given two-year terms and 300 lashes each, while a cameraman who helped film the episode was sentenced to two months in jail.

Jimaie said they would appeal, insisting that his client was a victim of the Beirut-based LBC satellite TV network, which broadcast the show in which he appeared.

"My client has been presented to the people as a scapegoat to cover up the real culprit, LBC," Jimaie said in a statement after the verdict was announced.

He also said his client's case had been hurt by heavy media coverage that sparked public anger over Abdul Jawad's behaviour.

Abdual Jawad was disappointed by the verdict, Jimaie told AFP, "but he is mostly worried about his mother, who is in her 70s and has heart problems."

In July, Abdul Jawad, an employee of Saudi Airlines and a divorced father of four, appeared on an episode of LBC's racy show "Bold Red Line."

On the show, filmed in his Jeddah bachelor's apartment with his three friends present, he talked about having sex at 14 with a neighbour, picking up women using his cellphone's Bluetooth function and displayed sex aids and toys on camera.

A YouTube clip viewed hundreds of thousands of times sparked widespread anger among conservatives, in a country where unrelated men and women are strictly forbidden to meet.

After religious and judicial authorities received what they said were hundreds of complaints from the public, Abdul Jawad was arrested on July 31.

Religious leaders said the programme violated Islamic laws of lewdness and promoted illicit behavior, and that Abdul Jawad should be punished for extramarital sex based on his "confessions".

Jimaie said the case was inappropriately tried in a criminal court, which falls under the Islamic text-based legal system, rather than in a court handling media cases, where presumably more modern business law would prevail.

He said they are suing LBC and that the case will open next month. Abdul Jawad accused LBC of manipulating the episode to show him in a bad light.

Broadcast free-to-air by satellite around the Middle East, the talk show "Bold Red Line" featured frank discussions on provocative subjects like homosexuality among Arabs and women's rights in restrictive Gulf states.

Reached by telephone, Malik Maktebi, the popular host of "Bold Red Line" said he knew of the verdict but was not allowed by LBC to speak publicly about the case.
LBC chairman Pierre Daher also refused comment.

"It's a very sensitive matter, so from the beginning we decided not to talk about the issue," he told AFP by telephone.

The case also sparked a surge in criticism of most popular television from Saudi clerics, who follow the extremely conservative Wahhabist school of Islam.

Although based in more freewheeling Lebanon, LBC and another liberal regional network, Rotana, are owned by Saudi tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a frequent target of Saudi religious conservatives for ignoring their rules.

LBC's offices in Jeddah and Riyadh were shut by Saudi authorities after Abdul Jawad was arrested.

Prominent Islamic scholar Sheikh Yousaf al-Ahmad, referring to some of the largest regional broadcast groups, said in early August: "MBC, Al-Arabiya, ART and the Rotana channels are all axes that destroy Islam and Muslims."

"The owner of LBC is known. We tell Alwaleed bin Talal, fear God!"