JEDDAH, 21 May 2004 — Customs officer Ibrahim Mabrouk has been waiting for 14 months for his case to be heard. “I took an SR2,000 bribe,” he says at a crowded Jeddah courthouse. “I kept SR600 and gave the rest to five accomplices. But I got caught and the police were told.”

Mabrouk has confessed and says he is ready to accept punishment. But he has seven children and wants the case to be expedited. “I was told I could go to jail for up to one year,” he told Al-Madinah newspaper. “But I want it to end so I can go back to work.”

The corridors are full of people waiting for their hearing. Some say they are innocent, others are here on someone else’s behalf. Many agree that the process is slow and sometimes disorganized.

Hamed Al-Sawat has a pharmacy in Taif. “Health Affairs imposed SR7,000 in fines for not complying with their standards of cleanliness,” he says.

But he feels persecuted. “They come in every other day, and every time they fine me. There are three other pharmacies nearby that don’t see inspectors more than once a month, so I’m suing the inspectors.”

Al-Sawat filed the suit a year ago, but this is the first hearing. “I hope I’ll get justice and the judgment won’t be delayed,” he says.

Abdullah Hattan also chafes at the delay. “I’m helping a foreigner from another Arab country who had trouble with his sponsor,” he says. “My friend was accused of forging three bills for SR750 each, but he denies it and says the sponsor just didn’t want to pay the bills.

“The problem is that the judge is delaying sentencing. There are not enough judges in the court and more and more people are coming every day.”

Sometimes it’s impossible to see the judge for the crowds surrounding him, says Abdullah Al-Zahrani. “This is all because of the organization. The judge is given more than one case at a time, and the paperwork gets mixed up. It happens that a judge needs to hear a case in private because some morality issue is involved, yet there are all these people around him.”

The reason, he says, is that the few clerks are inexperienced. “There is not enough staff in the court, and they are young men earning SR2,000 a month. They simply can’t handle the number of people who come here,” he added.