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Saudi Arabia
Law Enforcement
In the limited public security structure inherited from the Ottoman
Empire, police work was done informally and justice was administered
by local or tribal authorities. Gradually, during the reign of
Abd al Aziz, modern organs of government were introduced and became
responsible for maintaining public order. By royal decree in 1950,
Abd al Aziz created a general directorate to supervise all police
functions in the kingdom, and a year later he established the
Ministry of Interior, which has since been in charge of police
matters. Subordinate to the Ministry of Interior general directorates
charged with maintaining internal security included Public Security,
Investigation, Coast Guard, and Special Security. The offices
of the deputy ministers for administration, national security
affairs, and immigration and naturalization, and the Internal
Security Forces College were all on the same organizational level
as the four general directorates. Governors of the amirates reported
directly to the minister of interior .
In return for their loyalty and the maintenance of peace and
order in the tribal areas, the king provided subsidies to the
shaykhs and a minimum of government interference in tribal affairs.
Under this system, offenses and breaches of the peace were punished
by the responsible shaykh. The national guard acted as a support
force to quell disturbances or restore order if tribal authority
could not.
The public security forces, particularly the centralized Public
Security Police, could also get emergency support from the national
guard or, in extremis, from the regular armed forces. The Public
Security Police, recruited from all areas of the country, maintained
police directorates at provincial and local levels. The director
general for public security retained responsibility for police
units but, in practice, provincial governors exercised considerable
autonomy. Provincial governors were frequently senior amirs of
the Al Saud.
Since the mid-1960s, a major effort has been made to modernize
the police forces. During the 1970s, quantities of new vehicles
and radio communications equipment enabled police directorates
to operate sophisticated mobile units, especially in the principal
cities. Helicopters were also acquired for use in urban areas.
Police uniforms were similar to the khaki and olive drab worn
by the army except for the distinctive red beret. Policemen usually
wore sidearms while on duty.
Dealings with the security forces were often a source of difficulty
for foreigners in the kingdom. Ordinary policemen could be impatient
with those who did not speak Arabic and were often illiterate.
Darker-skinned workers were said to be treated more roughly than
Europeans or North Americans. Detentions of everyone connected
with a serious crime or accident could result until the police
investigated matters.
The police security forces were divided into regular police and
special investigative police of the General Directorate of Investigation
(GDI), commonly called the mubahith (secret police).
The GDI conducted criminal investigations in addition to performing
the domestic security and counterintelligence functions of the
Ministry of Interior. The Directorate of Intelligence, which reported
directly to the king, was responsible for intelligence collection
and analysis and the coordination of intelligence tasks and reporting
by all intelligence agencies, including those of the Ministry
of Defense and Aviation and the national guard.
An important feature of domestic security was the Ministry of
Interior's centralized computer system at the National Information
Center in Riyadh. The computer network, linking 1,100 terminals,
maintained records on citizens' identity numbers and passports,
foreigners' residence and work permits, hajj visas, vehicle registrations,
and criminal records. Reports from agents and from the large number
of informants employed by the security services were also entered.
Officials of the Directorate of Intelligence had authority to
carry out wiretaps and mail surveillance.
The Special Security Force was the Saudi equivalent of a special
weapons assault team (SWAT), such as had been incorporated into
police forces in various parts of the world. Reporting directly
to the minister of interior, the force was organized after the
poor performance of the national guard during the revolt at the
Grand Mosque at Mecca in 1979. The force was equipped with UR-416
armored vehicles from West Germany and nonlethal chemical weapons.
According to The Military Balance, the force had a personnel
strength of 500 in 1992, although estimates from other sources
have ranged much higher. It was reported in 1990 that the antiterrorism
unit of the Special Security Force was being disbanded and its
German training staff repatriated.
The strength of the Coast Guard was 4,500 as of 1992 and of the
Frontier Force 10,500, according to The Military Balance.
The Frontier Force patrolled land borders and carried out customs
inspections. The Coast Guard deployed its units from ports along
the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea with a primary mission to prevent
smuggling. Among its varied inventory of craft, the largest were
four 210-ton offshore patrol craft acquired from West Germany
in 1989. Two were based at Jiddah and two at Ad Dammam. The Coast
Guard also had about thirty large patrol craft, 135 inshore patrol
craft, and sixteen British-built Hovercraft.
An unusual, if not unique, internal security force in Saudi Arabia
was the autonomous and highly visible religious police, or mutawwiin
(see Glossary). Organized under the authority of the king in conjunction
with the ulama, the mutawwiin were charged with ensuring
compliance with the puritanical precepts of Wahhabism. A nationwide
organization known in English as the Committees for the Propagation
of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (also seen as Committees for
Public Morality), the mutawwiin earned a reputation for
fanaticism and brutality that had become an embarrassment, but
the Al Saud has seemingly been reluctant to confront the ulama
in a showdown. Primarily, the mutawwiin enforced public
observance of such religious requirements as the five daily prayers,
fasting during Ramadan, the modesty of women's dress, and the
proscriptions against the use of alcohol (see Wahhabi Theology
, ch. 2).
Once an important instrument of Abd al Aziz for upholding standards
of public behavior, the ultraconservatism of the mutawwiin
had become an anachronism, contrasting with the modernization
processes working in other sectors of society. The government
has occasionally disciplined overzealous mutawwiin, following
complaints from a foreign government over treatment of its nationals.
After a series of raids on rich and influential Saudis in 1990,
the government appointed a new and more compliant leader of the
religious police.
The religious police had the legal right to detain suspects for
twenty-four hours before turning them over to the regular police
and were known to have flogged detainees to elicit confessions.
They often used switch-like sticks to beat those perceived to
be in violation of religious laws. Foreign workers, including
some from the United States, have been targets of harassment and
raids. According to one estimate, there were about 20,000 mutawwiin
in 1990. Most mutawwiin wore the traditional white thaub,
were salaried, and were regarded as government employees. Some
incidents of harassment have been attributed to self-appointed
vigilantes outside the regular religious police hierarchy.
Data as of December 1992
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