Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – Three women in Aceh charged with consorting with non-related males could face three to nine lashes of the cane following their arrest by the province's shariah police over the weekend.

The women, aged 28, 29 and 30 years, were arrested during a raid on a beauty salon in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, in the early hours of Saturday by the Wilayatul Hisbah, or shariah police, an officer told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday.

"The salon has long been suspected of being a place of immorality," said Ritasari Pujiastuti, the head of the WH in Banda Aceh, adding that during a raid there two months earlier, officers had arrested a man and a women together who were not related to each other.

Under Aceh's implementation of partial shariah, or Islamic law, men and women who are not related to each other, or not muhrim, are prohibited from being alone together.

One of the women arrested on Saturday, believed to have run the salon, was alleged to have let the two others come inside with male companions.

Ritasari said shariah officers arrested the first woman outside the salon just as she was locking up after having let the others in. One of the other women was found hiding in the attic of the three-story shophouse occupied by the salon, while the third was caught after leading officers on an hour-long chase across the rooftop of the row of shophouses.

The two men they were with also fled across the rooftop but managed to evade capture, Ritasari said.

The woman who was arrested in the attic later told reporters at the shariah police headquarters that she was a prostitute and had been arrested once before in a shariah raid. Shariah officers also found several condoms in her bag.

The three women have been charged with violating the shariah ordinance on morality, for which they face between 20 and 50 days of detention, followed by a public caning of three to nine lashes each.

Until earlier this year, the shariah police were not authorized to detain suspected violators, and were required to release them after issuing them a verbal admonishment. But a bylaw passed last year and which came into force earlier this year now permits the detention of shariah offenders.

Ritasari said her office would punish the three women to the fullest extent of the new bylaw, "especially given that one of them has been caught before."

She added that the couple arrested at the salon two months earlier were expected to stand trial very soon, where they also face the prospect of a caning sentence.

Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/aceh-shariah-police-arrest-three-women-alleged-prostitution/