He was speaking in a forum entitled “The Saudi Justice between Development and Conventional Methods” organized by Madinah Islamic University on Tuesday.

In his speech, the minister covered all current legal issues in addition to discussing the salient points of the legal reform initiated almost four years ago. “The Supreme Court is empowered with the authority to draft new legal principles needed for the Kingdom’s legal system,” the minister said.

He strongly argued the need to adhere to Shariah, Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah — the bases of the Saudi justice system — to counter extremist thought.

The audience flooded the minister with questions on hot issues such as corruption in courts, codification of legal verdicts, women’s law offices and permission for women lawyers to practice.  “Some errors are committed by judges in their individual judgment, though they are made with good intentions. However, their excesses will be dealt with in line with Shariah and government regulations,” the minister said. He added that judges were not angels.

With regard to women’s offices in courts, Al-Issa said the ministry would follow the orders of the higher authorities who have decided that all government departments should have women’s sections.

The minister denied that there are not enough judges in Saudi courts. He said there are 1,400 judges in addition to 284 junior judges working the Kingdom’s courts.

He hoped that in the future there would be good relations between lawyers and judges with modern court buildings equipped with advanced technology.

Women also participated in the event, but a failure of the microphone shortly before Princess Basmah bint Saud started asking questions to the minister caused uproar in the ladies’ section.

Princess Basmah held the minister responsible for deliberately disconnecting the microphone in order not to listen to her questions. 

“The topics I wanted to raise included abuse of women, sending innocent women into the midst of criminals and deviants in jails, blocking the women’s marriages by their guardians and the role of the human rights groups and monitoring agencies (against the abuse of women),” the princess said. 

Muhammad Al-Okla, rector of the university, said the disconnection was accidental when the princess was about to ask questions, as the same thing also happened to Tariq Al-Habib, a Saudi psychology statistician.

He said the university or the minister did not have any reservation about the participation of women in the event.