Members of the General Commission of the High Court has started a survey Tuesday to check the prices of camels in the Kingdom, as part of a bid to reassess blood money payments. Once the survey has been completed, the committee would submit a final report to the High Court. The Court will then be in a position to revalue the blood money to be paid for semi-intentional and unintentional murder. The Court is currently reviewing the blood money for murder, which has been fixed at SR110,000 for semi-intentional murder and SR100,000 for unintentional murder. These amounts had been set by the Supreme Judiciary Council in 1980 and not changed or updated since. In Islam, it has been a tradition to pay 100 camels for murder under these circumstances. According to reports in the Saudi media earlier this week, quoting the Saudi Press Agency, King Abdullah, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, has approved a study into pardons for prisoners on death row. This comes in the wake of the families of the murdered citizens asking for large sums of money from the family of the killer, even if they are poor. The Saudi Press Agency also noted there is a seven year old royal decree limiting to SR500,000 that can be claimed to offer a pardon.
