RIYADH, Sept 29: Saudi Arabia's grand mufti has prohibited as un-Islamic trading in camera-equipped mobile phones which can take "illicit" pictures, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Such phones "could be exploited to photograph and spread vice in the (Saudi) Muslim community," Al-Madina quoted Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh as saying. Camera-equipped mobile phones are ostensibly banned in the kingdom, but they are apparently very much in use and are often the centre of controversy.

Two Saudi women were badly beaten by other female guests at a wedding party earlier this month when they were seen using a mobile phone to photograph the segregated celebration.

In July, two young men from a prominent Saudi family were arrested for orchestrating and filming a sexual assault on a 17-year-old girl by a Nigerian driver. -AFP