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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
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
(see
fig. 8).
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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