Video images captured on mobile telephones and published on websites in recent days showed a guard whipping two prisoners, who appeared to be teenagers or in their early 20s, with what looked like plastic tubes. A second guard was involved.
"They did it as a form of meting out fatherly discipline, like teachers do in schools, but it was individual behaviour that we cannot accept," Interior Ministry prison chief Ali Al Harthi said.
"They have been suspended pending an investigation." Newspapers said the prisoners, held in a non-smoking area at the high-security Haer prison outside of Riyadh, had asked guards to supply them with cigarettes.
Earlier this year, images captured on a mobile telephone led to the trial of two police officers in Egypt accused of torturing a detainee, signalling the growing power of Internet bloggers and websites in Arab countries.
