Three new courts will be created and 12 new Bahraini judges appointed by the end of next year in the Kingdom, said a senior Justice and Islamic Affairs Ministry official.

The new appointments will be in addition to the 19 new Bahraini judges currently being trained, who will be assigned to courts by June this year.

The new courts and judges will help meet the increasing caseload, judicial inspection directorate head Isa Mubarak Al Kaabi told a Press conference at the Justice and Islamic Affairs Ministry on Monday.

The directorate was created by the Supreme Judicial Council last year to tackle the increasing demand on the courts, said Al Kaabi, who is also a High Civil Court judge.

He said the directorate had drawn up a plan under which three new courts and another 12 new Bahraini judges will be appointed by the end of 2011.

"The courts which will be created are lower criminal court, lower civil court and a high court (either civil or criminal, depending on the level of demand)," said Al Kaabi.

"They will be completed by the end of next year, along with the appointment of 12 new judges - seven will be distributed among the criminal, civil, labour, specialised, urgent matters, administrative and investment courts, while the other five will be distributed among the Sharia courts.

"These will be in addition to the existing 19 new Bahraini judges, who are undergoing training to take their new posts, after the contracts of 17 Arab judges end in June."

"The 19, three of which are women, will soon be distributed among the courts (as part of their training) to work alongside judges and gain experience." This move is in line with His Majesty King Hamad's reforms, aimed at ensuring that over 90 per cent of the country's judges are Bahraini, he said.

Al Kaabi also said that the ministry had created a new urgent matters court in January, to help with the overflow of cases. He said a total of 34,178 cases were reviewed during last year in the civil, criminal and Sharia courts.-TradeArabia News Service