Criminal
Uncodified hudud and qisas alongside codified regulatory offences
There is no general penal code. Serious offences are handled through the sharia categories of hudud, qisas and ta'zir, while specific statutes codify offences such as cybercrime, trafficking and narcotics.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Criminal courts, with the Specialised Criminal Court handling terrorism and state security matters.
- Deadline — 24 hours for police to bring a detainee before an investigator
- Deadline — 30 days to appeal a criminal conviction
Governing law
- Law of Criminal Procedure 2013Royal Decree M/2
- Anti-Cyber Crime Law 2007
- Law on Combating Crimes of Terrorism and its Financing 2017
- Anti-Harassment Law 2018
In practice
The absence of a general penal code is the defining structural fact and it has direct practical consequences: for offences in the ta'zir category the judge determines both the characterisation and the sentence, so outcomes are less predictable than in a codified system and comparisons with sentencing ranges elsewhere do not transfer. Qisas and diyya give the victim's family a formal role in the disposal of homicide and serious assault cases, including the power to pardon, which has no analogue in most systems. The Specialised Criminal Court's jurisdiction over broadly drafted terrorism and state security offences is the subject of sustained international criticism and any account of Saudi criminal justice that omits it is incomplete.