Shura Council's Foreign Affairs, Defence and National Security Committee held a meeting here today, under the chairmanship of Dr. Shaikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa.

The committee discussed a draft law on computer-related crimes (accompanying Royal Decree No.47 for the year 2009) and a draft law on computer crimes (prepared in response to a proposed law submitted by the Council of Representatives).

The panel met representatives from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice & Islamic Affairs and the Central Informatics Organization (CIO) within the framework of its study of the draft law.

The committee discussed the visions of the relevant authorities pertaining to what the draft law included, as well as answering number of committee members' questions.

It decided to continue discussing the draft law in the upcoming meetings.

The draft law aims to identify and criminalize dangerous actions that occur on computer’s system, programmes, data, anything related to it or works as a tool for these actions, as well as how to benefit from electronic data derived from computers or other crimes which computers helped to commit.