JEDDAH: The Chairman of the Lawyers Committee in Madina has said he expects the judge being held on corruption charges to have the funds he earned during the course of his duties seized by the state. Sultan Bin Zahim said that investigators will be looking at the nature and causes of the judge's behavior, and that any conviction would seek to prevent its reoccurrence. According to Bin Zahim, the Higher Judicial Council has yet to be presented with any charges against the judge, who is alleged to have accepted money to ease real estate cases through his court, but investigations are ongoing and numerous witnesses and suspects are being questioned. “Once the Bureau of Monitoring and Investigation has established that there is substance to the charges against the judge, they will be put before the Higher Judicial Council which will then take up the investigation,” Bin Zahim said. The lawyer said that if it goes to trial, the case will be heard behind closed doors and the judge will be allowed a defense attorney. Due to the special nature of the case, the ruling will be decided by a majority and will be final. “The suggestions by some lawyers that the judge should be pardoned but removed from his post should he be found guilty would not constitute a strong enough deterrent,” Bin Zahim said. The Madina judge was first taken into custody during Ramadan for allegedly accepting bribes to arrange through his court illegal ownership of real estate. Several businessmen and state employees along with seven engineering and planning firms are all suspected of involvement in the various cases that passed through his courtroom. The case raised eyebrows in legal and public circles, however, after the judge claimed that he was “under a magic spell” at the time of offenses for which he has been held on charges of corruption. The judge said he was later cured of the spell through “ruqya”, healing through Qur'anic recitation. Fayez Al-Qathami, a well-known practitioner of “ruqya” subsequently claimed that he questioned a “jinni”- or “genie”, as traditionally rendered in English – that spoke through the judge and identified a real estate broker who is also a suspect in the case as the caster of the spell. Last Thursday, Salim Bin Atiya, the lawyer defending the “spell-casting” broker, demanded that Al-Qathami bring the genie to court so that his statements could be heard. “If what the judge says is true, then the genie is either immoral or an unbeliever sent by a magic practitioner who has left the bounds of religion, as acts of magic by necessity require one to abandon the realm of Islam and enter the realm of unbelief,” Bin Atiya said. What the genie said More recently, Al-Qathami spoke to Okaz/Saudi Gazette and gave details of his conversation with the genie – who spoke through the tongue of the judge – and reiterated that the session was conducted in the presence of members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the Hai'a), a claim previously denied by the presidency of the organization. “The judge was given ruqya readings by sheikhs from Qassim, and the genie spoke to them,” he said. “What he said needs to be verified, as our Sheikh Bin Baz (the former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia) said that if a genie spoke through a human tongue then that genie would be acting criminally, and might be lying.” The genie is purported to have revealed the name of a real estate broker it said was responsible for putting the accused judge under a spell, but Al-Qathami warned that the information might not be reliable. When asked if the genie provided details on the cases in which the judge was involved, Al-Qathami said that all the details were with the Hai'a who recorded them in their report. “The relevant authorities are investigating,” he added. On the subject of the judge, he said that he had most recently started treating him in Ramadan of this year, but had first conducted ruqya readings for him four years ago when he showed signs of “weariness”. “The magic only really took hold of him a year or two ago though,” he said, adding that what happened to the judge was “magic, making people do things of which they are not conscious”.
