RIYADH, July 15: In a bid to restrain ‘mutawwas,’ the Saudi Ministry of Interior has instructed members of the local Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to strictly adhere to the law and hand suspects immediately over to the custody of police.

Commission members are forbidden from taking any arrested person to their centres either for interrogation or detention and processing. The statement said that commission members who fail to comply with these directives would be “immediately dismissed.”

The ministry's communication comes after a July 1 royal directive stating that commission field members must abide by a 1982 order that they have no authority to detain or process suspects, an order that has been ignored over the years. Some recent high-profile incidents involving alleged maltreatment of suspects has reignited the issue.

An Interior Ministry statement provided to the local media said that recent violations of procedure (the commission acting as police officers, arresting suspects and transferring them to detention cells in commission centres) have had “drastic results.”