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| International |
| Briton sentenced to death for Saudi bombings |
| 2002-07-29 |
| A Saudi court has sentenced a Briton and a Canadian to death and ordered four Britons and a Belgian jailed for their roles in fatal bombings in 2000. Briton Alexander Mitchell and Canadian William Sampson are to be executed. Britons James Lee, James Cottle, Les Walker and Peter Brandon and Belgian Raf Schyvens have all been given prison sentences, according to lawyer Michael O'Kane. There's something that doesn't ring true about Britons car bombing each other in turf battles over bathtub gin. It's a cultural thing; they're not blowing each other up in Brighton, why in Riyadh? Maybe if they were Irishmen... Mr O'Kane, who works for the Saudi law firm which is representing the British and Canadian defendants, could not say how long the jail sentences were, or on exactly which charges each was convicted. He says the defence team had been allowed to read the verdicts just once in the public prosecutor's office and were not given copies. Mr O'Kane says defence lawyers had appealed against the verdicts, saying the men were tortured into making confessions that were later withdrawn. If government refuses to abide by its own laws, how it expect its citizens to abide by them? The men were arrested after Briton Christopher Rodway, 48, who worked in a Saudi hospital, was killed in a November 17 blast in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, that also slightly injured his wife. On November 22, another car bomb injured two men and a woman, all Britons. Mr Sampson, Mr Mitchell and Mr Schyvens were shown on Saudi state television in February 2001 confessing to carrying out the bombings. No motive was given. This bit of Soddy arrogance may be seen as a warning to the West that our citizens within the country are hostage. It could also be setting things up so they can be "magnanimous" and kick them out of the country instead of lopping heads off; if they do that, though, they can probably expect to see some pretty hair-raising torture stories hitting the press. And Bush Senior's reaction to the Iraqis and the "human shields" was basically to ignore it and go ahead with preparations for war. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |