Saudi- Two police officers charged with forgery 

(MENAFN - Arab News) Two police officers from Jeddah are being prosecuted for fabricating criminal charges against an expatriate woman, which led to her subsequent detention.

The Control and Investigations Board (CIB) of Makkah Province charged that the two officers furthermore failed to follow the required legal procedures and did not hand over her to the deportation center, Al-Hayat daily reported yesterday.

The Third Circuit of the Jeddah Administrative Court (Court of Grievances) started a hearing in the case on Wednesday.

According to the CIB criminal file against the two officers, they counterfeited an official document stating that the woman was arrested after she was found in a street without identity papers. She was detained because of her lack of identity, even though the woman's sponsor had brought her to the police for deportation.

One of the defendants, the head of a police division at the rank of colonel, denied all charges against him. But the sitting judge Saad Al-Maliki called for policemen under the colonel to make witness statements against the accused. A policeman of the corporal rank told the court that the maid was detained in the division prison for a long period, even though her sponsor had surrendered her to the police station. He said he had prepared the statement of receiving the woman at the station and handing her to the captain, another accused in the case.

The acting chief of the police station, a lieutenant colonel, was in charge of the station when the first defendant went on vacation. In his witness statement he said,

"When I inquired with the captain, the second defendant, about the status of the maid detained in the station prison, he told me that she was arrested as an unidentifiable person and no file was maintained in her name."

The second defendant said he heard from other policemen that the first defendant ordered a policeman to prepare an official criminal file, showing that the woman was an unidentified person. Another policeman, a key witness in the case, said he prepared the official file at the orders of the accused colonel.

When asked by the court why the woman was not sent to the deportation center, as the regulation demanded in the first place, the defendants did not give a clear answer and blamed each other.

The judge adjourned the court until next week to issue his verdict.