Shoura Wants Expatriate Prisoners Extradited
BIP criticized for lack of female investigators
Feb 10, 2016
Suad Al-Shamrani
RIYADH — The Shoura Council has asked for repatriating expatriate prisoners to their respective homes and said this would save the the government more than SR1 billion annually.
The Council made the call while discussing the report of the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution (BIP) for the fiscal year 2014-15 on Monday.
It asked the bureau to activate the prisoners exchange agreements with a number of countries to relieve the financial burden on the Directorate General of Prisons.
Prince Khaled Al-Saud, a member, said a prisoner costs the general budget about SR4,000 every month. “As there are about 31,000 expatriate prisoners, the government is spending more than SR1 billion on them. This amount could be saved if these prisoners were repatriated,” he explained.
Amal Al-Shaman, a female member, criticized the bureau for lack of female investigators to deal with women.
“There are more than 433 cases of physical attacks against women, more than 399 cases of ethical abuse and more than 2,300 issues of aggression against children yet the bureau does not have female investigators to question the women involved in these cases,” she said.
Shaman said women are usually investigated in the presence of a female prison guard, a member of the Commission of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia) and a male investigator from the bureau.
“Under this scenario, the women under investigations will be in a miserable condition of fear and uncertainty,” she said.
Shaman was astonished why the bureau would not employ women investigators from the graduates of law colleges though it has more than 2,000 vacancies. “There are only 26 women employed at the BIP as administrators,” she noted.
She asked about the mechanism the bureau uses to supervise women prisons and the social protection homes in the absence of women inspectors.
Jubran Al-Qahtani asked the bureau to increase its staff in view of the large number of available vacancies.
The council, in a closed session, discussed the annual report of the Interior Ministry for the first time since it was established about 23 years ago.
The council commended the ministry’s efforts in combating terrorism and extorting strenuous efforts to become an e-government but said it should make more efforts to establish an integrated traffic system in the Kingdom.
It also asked the ministry to adopt a technological project that will enable citizens to film accidents so as to be authentic partners with the authorities to reduce the number of the traffic victims.
The council also asked the ministry to expedite the implementation of the National Strategic Plan for Traffic Safety which was adopted by the Council of Ministers about two years ago.
It also approved an annual increment in the pensions for the government civil and military retirees equivalent to the rate of inflation under the tittle: “cost of living allowance”.
Meanwhile, with the approval of 82 members, the council decided to hold three sessions a week and to take the next week off. It will, therefore, be holding six sessions a month.