A link to the story is here, and the text is pasted below.
Daughter drove car after father felt incapacitated and needed help
- By Habib Toumi Bureau chief
- Published: 12:45 October 17, 2012
Manama: A Saudi police spokesman has denied claims that a woman has been arrested for driving her father’s car.
“The reports that a woman was seen driving a car with her father
sitting next to her are true,” Sa’ad Saleh Tarrad, media spokesman for
Al Baha police, said. “However, the investigation concluded that the
father felt ill and could not drive, so he asked his daughter to drive
the car. Both the man and his daughter were released immediately after
they were questioned and there was no arrest,” he said, quoted by Al
Madina daily on Wednesday.
Reports claimed that the woman was held by the police after she was
caught driving in the Saudi Arabian southwestern city. No legal text
bans Saudi women from driving, but deep-rooted customs have not allowed
women to sit behind the steering wheel as a bitter standoff between
activists calling for granting them the right and conservatives who see
it as a gateway to serious social problems has intensified.
Reports about women arrested for driving have invariably mobilised
forces in both camps to call for their release or to condemn their
challenge to the local customs. In the absence of legal texts regulating
the matter, punishment for women who were “caught” driving ranged from
signing pledges not to drive to corporal measures.
Last year, King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz overturned a sentence of 10 lashes handed down to a woman who defied the driving ban.
Several bloggers said that the sentence against the woman, Shaima
Jastaina, had to be condemned as an expression to stall a pro-women
reform drive launched by King Abdullah that included giving women the
right to vote and run in municipal elections and becoming members of the
Shura Council, the country’s highest advisory authority.
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