Mobile phones with built-in cameras have been banned in Saudi Arabia after reports that they were being used to secretly photograph women.

According to a report on online news website Ananova, Nokia's 7650 picture phones were used to take covert pictures of women and have been withdrawn from shops in the kingdom.

A spokesman in the Middle East for Nokia is said to have told The Times: "There is a ban by the Saudi government, but no official reason has been given."

The phones apparently first attracted the disapproval of the Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice in Saudi Arabia back in May.

The president of the Commission, which enforces the country's strict Sharia Islamic laws, was reported in the Middle Eastern press to have expressed fears that the phones would be used to take inappropriate photos of women.

The approbation appears to centre on a Nokia model which is extremely popular with young Saudi men.

Saudi Ericsson, the local operation of the Swedish mobile phone giant, pointed out that its phones are approved by the Saudi Arabian Standards Organisation.

The problem isn't confined to Saudi Arabia, according to The Times, as last week a court in the United Arab Emirates fined a local man £1,000 for breach of privacy after he secretly took pictures of six women as they ate lunch in a Dubai restaurant.

And it is not the first time that new technology has fallen foul of Saudi Arabia's religious leaders.

Earlier this summer, the Saudi government banned access to over 2,000 websites. Although many were sexually explicit or religious in nature, other vetoed sites were related to women, health, drugs and pop culture.

Both Nokia and the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia failed to provide comment when contacted by vnunet.com.