Specialized Criminal Court (Saudi Arabia)

The Specialized Criminal Court (SCC; Arabic: المحكمة الجزائية المتخصصة, al-Maḥkama al-Jazāʾiyya al-Mutakhaṣṣiṣa), also spelled Specialised Criminal Court, is a Saudi Arabian court for terrorism and national-security cases. It is based in Riyadh.^[1][2] It was set up in October 2008 to try thousands of terrorism suspects, many of whom had been held for years without charge.^[3][1] Since 2011 it has also tried peaceful critics of the government. These include human rights defenders, women's rights activists, clerics, writers, members of the Shi'a minority, and people prosecuted for social media posts.^[3][4]

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and UN bodies have described the court as lacking independence and its trials as unfair.^[3][1][4] The Saudi government says the SCC is an independent and impartial part of the ordinary justice system that holds fair and open trials.^[5:1]

History

After a series of attacks beginning in 2003, claimed by al-Qaeda, Saudi security forces detained thousands of suspects. HRW reported in 2012 that many had spent years in jails run by the Mabahith, the domestic intelligence service, without charge or trial. The Supreme Judicial Council created the SCC in 2008 to try these cases.^[1][4] The authorities first referred to the court in public on October 28, 2008. On that date they announced that the Council had converted a special section of the General Court in Riyadh, which handled state-security cases, into an anti-terrorism court. On January 29, 2009 the Minister of Justice issued a decree formally establishing the SCC. The decree has never been published, and it made no provision for appeals. A separate decree in April 2011 created the SCC Appeal Court.^[6:1]

Protests spread across the Middle East in 2011. According to USCIRF and Amnesty International, the court then began prosecuting peaceful activists whose views differed from the government's.^[4][3] Amnesty treats a May 2011 case as the turning point. That month, 16 men known as the "Jeddah reformists" were referred to the court after long detention without charge. They were accused of forming a secret organization, financing terrorism and inciting against the King, and they denied all the charges. In November 2011 the SCC sentenced them to 5 to 30 years in prison.^[6] The UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism dates the shift a year earlier. He said he was "reliably informed" that the court's focus on al-Qaeda-linked violence "began to change in 2010".^[7:1] Figures given to him show how active the court has been. By January 2016 it had tried 2,225 cases involving 6,122 defendants.^[7:1] By April 2012 HRW was calling for the court to be abolished. It cited trials of reformers and critics such as Muhammad al-Bajadi, who was sentenced that month to four years in prison.^[1]

Structure and jurisdiction

In 2012 HRW reported that the court sat on one floor of the Riyadh General Court and that judges sometimes traveled to other cities, such as Jeddah, for hearings. Judges were individually selected to sit on panels, and no public statute defined the court's jurisdiction.^[1] The Supreme Judicial Council appoints the SCC's judges.^[4:1] According to Amnesty, there are no transparent criteria for these appointments. Human rights lawyers it spoke to believe the main criterion is a judge's perceived loyalty to the government.^[6] Sources differ on how cases are heard. HRW described panels of judges in 2012. Amnesty found that in the cases it documented between 2011 and 2019, trials were held before a single judge who had wide discretion over charges and sentences.^[1][6:2] Amnesty also reports that complaints about SCC cases can be examined only by the SCC itself. The Board of Grievances, Saudi Arabia's administrative court, cannot hear them.^[6] The Saudi government says the Council created the court under article 6 of the Statutes of the Judiciary, and that judges are appointed by royal order on the Council's recommendation.^[5:1]

At first, the Ministry of Interior investigated cases and referred them to the court. Two royal decrees in 2017 moved these powers to bodies that report directly to the King. One created the Public Prosecution, led by an attorney general. The other created the Presidency of State Security.^[4:1] In 2016 the UN Committee against Torture said the court was "insufficiently independent of the Ministry of the Interior".^[4]

Appeals go first to the SCC Appeal Court. If it upholds a verdict, the case goes automatically to the Supreme Court, whose confirmation makes the verdict final. Death sentences must then be ratified by the King before an execution takes place.^[6:2] Amnesty reports that appeals are heard behind closed doors, without the appellants or their lawyers. It says the Appeal Court sends its comments back to the SCC for a final judgment rather than giving written reasons, and that defendants are often not told the result.^[6:2] The Saudi government's account of the appeal of Manahel al-Otaibi says the Appeal Court met in the presence of the defendant, her lawyer and the public prosecutor.^[5] In several documented cases, appeal rulings have made sentences much longer. In others they have made them much shorter.^[4][8][9]

Laws applied

The SCC mainly applies Saudi Arabia's counter-terrorism and cybercrime laws. USCIRF describes the wording of these laws as vague and poorly defined.^[4]

• Anti-Cybercrimes Law (2007). Article 6 prohibits producing material "that harms public order, religious values, [or] public morals". It carries up to five years in prison and a fine of up to three million Saudi riyals.^[4]
• Penal Law for Crimes of Terrorism and its Financing (February 2014). USCIRF says this law widened the definition of terrorism to cover acts of peaceful expression. A Ministry of Interior decree in March 2014 added "calling for atheist thought" and "questioning the fundamental principles of Islam" to the list of terrorist crimes. A July 2014 decree gave the SCC exclusive jurisdiction over cases brought under the 2014 law, so some cases were moved to it from other courts.^[4:1] According to the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights, the first person the SCC convicted under the new law was the human rights lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair.^[10:1]
• Law on Counterterrorism and its Financing (October 2017). This law replaced the 2014 framework and moved extensive powers from the Ministry of Interior to the Public Prosecution and the Presidency of State Security.^[7] According to the UN Special Rapporteur, it lets the Public Prosecutor bar lawyers from communicating with their clients at any point during an investigation. Article 27 lets the SCC hear secret witnesses and expert testimony without the defense being able to cross-examine them.^[7] Under the 2014 law, suspects could be held indefinitely by order of the SCC. Under the 2017 law, an arrest warrant must be issued within seven days, a period the rapporteur called "seriously in excess" of international standards.^[7] Article 30 criminalizes "describing the King or the Crown Prince in a way that undermines religion or justice". The SCC used this article in the 2023 death sentence against Mohammed al-Ghamdi.^[11]

Criticism

Amnesty International's 2020 report Muzzling Critical Voices examined 95 people tried before the SCC between 2011 and 2019. About 52 of them were serving prison sentences of 5 to 30 years. At least 20 Shi'a men tried by the court had been sentenced to death on the basis of confessions they said were obtained through torture, and 17 of them had been executed.^[3:1] Amnesty reported:

• no access to a lawyer during arrest and interrogation;
• detention without contact with family or lawyers;
• appeals heard behind closed doors without the defendant or lawyer present;
• vague charges such as "disobeying the ruler".

Heba Morayef, Amnesty's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said the government "exploits the SCC to create a false aura of legality around its abuse of the counter-terror law to silence its critics".^[3]

HRW has reported similar problems since at least 2012:

• defendants held without contact before trial;
• judges preventing defendants from choosing their own lawyers;
• trials held entirely behind closed doors;
• some verdicts never given in writing.^[1]

USCIRF's 2021 factsheet says the SCC gives harsher sentences than other Saudi criminal courts for similar offenses and routinely denies defendants legal counsel. It adds that some convictions rest on confessions obtained through torture. It says these practices fall especially hard on religious minorities and on people who criticize the state's interpretation of Sunni Islam.^[4]

In April 2019 the ABA Center for Human Rights reported that it had reviewed SCC judgments and interviewed people familiar with the court's proceedings. It concluded that the SCC "routinely convicts individuals of terrorism charges without any meaningful evidence". It said that in the cases it reviewed, no credible witnesses, victims or physical evidence were produced. In several judgments, Shi'a protesters had been sentenced to death solely on confessions they said were obtained through torture.^[10:1]

Ben Emmerson, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, visited Saudi Arabia from April 30 to May 4, 2017. Afterwards he criticized the "unacceptably broad definition of terrorism" in the 2014 law and its use against human rights defenders, writers and other peaceful critics. He said the government had been unable to give him access to any of the people prosecuted under the law whom he had asked to interview.^[12:1] His final report to the UN Human Rights Council, issued in December 2018, says public information about SCC cases is "scarce". It lists reported violations including secret trials, trials without defense lawyers, torture, detention without contact with the outside world, and executions after "manifestly unfair trials". It concludes that the failure to provide minimum safeguards during detention and interrogation, together with courts' acceptance of coerced confessions as evidence, "amounts to a systematic and flagrant denial of justice".^[7:2] The report says the SCC has reportedly refused to investigate defendants' allegations of torture. More than 3,000 allegations of torture were formally recorded in Saudi Arabia between 2009 and 2015, but the rapporteur knew of no official prosecuted for torture.^[7] It adds that concerns about the court's independence "remain undiminished" after the 2017 reforms. In its view, the reforms placed investigative powers under bodies that report to the King and did not make them more independent.^[7]

Government position

The Saudi government rejects these criticisms. In a 2025 reply to UN human rights experts, its permanent mission in Geneva called the SCC "a key pillar of the Saudi judicial system" for national-security and terrorism cases. It said the court operates within a legal system that guarantees its independence and impartiality. It also said the court follows the same procedures as other criminal courts, upholds the presumption of innocence, and holds "fair and open" trials.^[5:1] The same reply says Saudi laws are "formulated with sufficient clarity and accuracy" and "contain no ambiguities or equivocal phrases".^[5]

The government's official Human Rights Commission made similar points in a January 2020 reply to Amnesty International. It said the SCC "follows the same rules and procedures that other criminal courts follow" and that "all hearings of the SCC have been public", attended by the accused, lawyers, family members, Commission representatives and media.^[6:2] Amnesty said the Commission's reply summarized the law but did not directly address the cases in its report. Amnesty also said it had documented many trials held wholly or mostly in secret.^[6] When Emmerson met the President of the SCC in 2017, the President rejected the allegations of abuse that had been made to him. The President also assured him that all the rights guaranteed to accused people were protected. Emmerson wrote that he did "not accept that to be the case".^[12:1][7:2]

These accounts conflict directly. No independent monitor has regular access to SCC trials that could settle the matter. Since 2015, diplomats from the European Union and its member states have attended some sessions of trials of human rights defenders. Amnesty notes that they have not put their observations on record, which lets the authorities point to their presence as evidence that trials are open.^[6] HRW, Amnesty International and ALQST report that observers and sometimes lawyers have been kept out of hearings.^[1][3][2] If the court's full judgments and trial records were published, or if independent observers were allowed to attend, these claims could be checked.

Notable cases

Analysis: effects on human agency

This section is Agpedia editorial analysis.

The SCC's record, as documented by rights groups and a US government commission, shows how counter-terrorism law can shrink the space for public speech. Terrorism laws with broad wording cover acts such as criticizing the King or "questioning the fundamental principles of Islam". Documented sentences range up to death for posts from accounts with almost no followers. Together these make ordinary speech about politics, religion or rights a serious legal risk. Large swings in sentences between the first ruling and the appeal make it harder for people to predict the consequences of what they say. The government's position is that the laws are clear and the trials fair, but hearings are closed, which makes that claim difficult to test. The likely result is widespread self-censorship. That limits people's ability to understand their situation, discuss it openly and organize around shared goals.