RIYADH, 21 April 2006 — Kasim was a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice before he was arrested and detained pending trial for shooting a man who tried to enter a girls’ school last year. Now he has entered a judicial system that most officials agree moves at a snail’s pace.
Kasim denies shooting the man and says the biggest hurdle to his defense is simply being unable to see the judge. “The first time I appeared in court my hearing was re-scheduled for months even though witnesses had appeared that day to say that I was not the shooter,” Kasim told Al-Riyadh newspaper.
Fuad Muhammad has been defending himself against the wrongful killing of a Sudanese expatriate. He said it took him two years to see a judge for the first time. Then, because no representative of the deceased showed up in court, the hearing was postponed.
“What I want is for them to speed up my case,” said Fuad, adding that he wonders how many more years he is going to wait behind bars before a decision is made in his case.
Kasim and Fuad are two of a growing number of prisoners that are asking for their cases to be expedited by bringing the courts closer to the prisons themselves.
He says that there are places inside the prison that are appropriate to be courtrooms suitable for the judicial procedures and the judges.
Kasim says that there are many innocent people inside the prisons waiting for their day in court, while, outside, their jobs are filled by others and their families suffer.
The idea of incorporating courts inside prisons has been backed by the Interior Ministry. However, the Justice Ministry disagrees saying that the prisons are not an appropriate venue for judicial procedures. This disagreement has gone on for months.
The Interior Ministry also cited security concerns in transporting prisoners to courts.
Some prisoners have been quoted in the media as saying that they would prefer not to be publicly embarrassed by being frog-marched in handcuffs as they are transported, in some cases considerably long distances, to and from the courtroom over a period of months and sometimes years.
Finally a royal edict was declared: A compromise that places courts next door to prisons, but not inside them.
The Al-Riyadh report quoted prisoners overwhelmingly in support of bringing courts closer to them. All the prisoners cited in the report, like Kasim, supported placing the courts inside prisons themselves.
Muhammad A., 21, sentenced to 15 years in prison for break-in and rape, has appealed the sentence but is in jail pending a final verdict. He said to Al-Riyadh that there is a desperate need for more courts, and he called specifically for courts inside the prisons that would give prisoners more access to the judicial system.
“(Expediting the judicial procedures) will not happen unless there are courts inside prisons,” said Muhammad. “We are suffering a lot from court delays. These delays are caused because there are not enough judges on one hand and on the other hand an increasing number of cases. Establishing courts inside prisons would help in speeding up the review of backlogged cases. My case was delayed for months. Every time a person goes before a judge, there is some kind of delay. The time between hearings is at least two months in all cases, and sometimes more.”
