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Subject: Lon Times: Torture & crucifixion sentence of British expat in Saudi
Date: 07 Sep 2003 13:00:45 GMT
From: baycobi@aol.com (Baycobi)
Organization: AOL, http://www.aol.co.uk
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Message-ID: <20030907090045.20822.00000336@mb-m21.aol.com>


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspap...806804,00.html

The Sunday Times - Britain
Sec 1, Page 1
September 07, 2003
Focus: Tortured until he wanted to die

He was chained, beaten and condemned to crucifixion. A British expat reveals
the full horror of being an innocent at the mercy of Saudi Arabia’s police.
Margarette Driscoll reports

It was a cool December morning, the kind that comes as a relief from the
Saudi
summer. Sandy Mitchell parked his 4x4 across the road from the security
forces
hospital in Riyadh just after 7am.

He was wearing his white coat and stethoscope, thinking about the list of
patients he had to see. As chief anaesthetic technician he felt it was
part of
his job to put patients at ease before operations. He used a glove puppet to
explain to children what he was about to do; there were three waiting on the
wards that day.

He was so preoccupied that he did not hear two cars draw up beside him. He
caught a flash of blue bodywork as a hood was pulled over his head and
he was
wrestled to the ground.

Overpowered, he was driven at speed through the city and then dragged
inside a
building. Only when the hood was removed did he see the secret police
uniforms
and realise that he was in an interrogation centre. The door clanged
shut and
he was left alone in an interview room.

He does not know how long he was there — several hours, perhaps — but he
knew enough about the reputation of this particular police force to feel
terrified. When the door opened again three men walked in, led by a Captain
Ibrahim.

This squat thirtysomething with a five o’clock shadow got straight to the
point. “What do you know about the bombings?� “Nothing,� said Mitchell.
He was punched, twice.

“By the time you leave here,� said Ibrahim, “you will have confessed or
gone insane from what we are going to do to you.�

In the event, Ibrahim was right on both counts. After nine days of sleep
deprivation and torture during which he was repeatedly beaten, his Thai
wife,
Noi, was threatened and he twice tried to commit suicide, Mitchell
confessed to
being a ringleader of a bombing campaign against other westerners.

By that time, he said, he was a “basket case�. He added: “I would have
admitted to being Guy Fawkes if they’d wanted me to. When you’ve taken so
much pain that you can’t endure any more, you’ll do anything to make it
stop.�

Last week, reunited with his cellmate Les Walker at their lawyer’s office in
London, Mitchell began the process of piecing together what had
happened. His
account of his treatment, and that of the five other Britons detained
with him,
will form the basis of a future legal action for compensation against
the Saudi
government.

A month after his release, Mitchell, 44, is still in a highly emotional
state
and describes himself as a “broken man�. He spent 15 months of his 2Å
years in a Saudi jail in solitary confinement, for much of that time
believing
that he would be beheaded or worse.

His Saudi lawyer told him that he had been sentenced to a form of
crucifixion
reserved for highway robbers, terrorists and people convicted of
treason. The
condemned man is “partially� beheaded, then strung up publicly on a cross
for three days.

Even now Mitchell wakes at night sweating and screaming. To avoid disturbing
his wife and four-year-old son Matthew he has taken to sleeping out on a
balcony. During his ordeal his weight dropped from 15st 4lb to 10st 3lb.
He has
a heart condition, weakness of the ankles through tendon damage and
depression
for which he is under the care of a forensic psychiatrist.


WASTAH is the grease that oils the wheels of Saudi life and Mitchell was a
master of it. Wastah is to use your influence to help others: mutual
backscratching.

Big, bluff, jovial Mitchell, a Scot, was well known in both the
expatriate and
local communities. He made friends with many Saudis he worked with at the
security forces hospital, which provided care for police personnel.

He was the one people turned to in times of trouble. Shortly after he first
arrived in 1982 he started visiting an American who had been caught with
alcohol and he was shocked by the conditions that he saw in prison.

After the man was released Mitchell kept up his prison visiting, using the
profits from his drinking club to provide food and toiletries and to buy
airline tickets for Filipino or Pakistani nationals who would be kept in
prison
even after they had finished their sentences until somebody could pay
for them
to leave the country.

“Because of my rapport with high-ranking officers, I could speed things
up if
someone was caught in a misdemeanour — caught with alcohol or speeding. If
there was difficulty visiting someone I could pick up the phone and say:
Ahmed,
or Mohammed or whoever, can you clear it?� he said. “The Saudi police were
very co-operative. They like being able to solve problems without going
through
the official channels.

“It cut both ways. If their wives needed to see an ophthalmologist or a
gynaecologist, the waiting lists were almost as long as the National Health
Service. They’d ring me and I’d speak to the consultant directly to make
the appointment. Wastah.�

Mitchell clearly relished this role as a Mr Fixit and, like many of his
30,000
western compatriots, he enjoyed a beer after work. For several years he and
Walker helped to run the Celtic Corner, a typical small-scale illicit
bar run
on a “compound� of 15 houses.

Home-brew was the order of the day in most of the bars, along with a local
spirit, sidiqi, known as “Sid�, or imported whisky or gin, which changed
hands for £100 a bottle. As long as alcohol stayed firmly behind compound
walls the Saudi authorities turned a blind eye to it.

They had to be careful: every so often clubs were raided and for a few weeks
the drinkers would have to lie low. Phones were tapped, so orders for
Sid were
made in code. Club members carried membership cards with false IDs: Gary
Dixon,
owner of the Empire Club, was Lord Byron. Mitchell was Kipper.

Mary O’Nions, a former associate director of nursing at Riyadh
University who
ran the Empire with her husband Gary, was jailed for 77 days after it was
raided in 1998. Mitchell lobbied the British embassy on her behalf, took her
food and helped her to leave the country when she was freed. She
remembers him
as a “lovely man, very helpful and never aggressive�.

Both Mitchell and Walker say they helped to run the Celtic Corner, but after
Mitchell’s son was born he became “too busy� — although he continued to
use it as a customer. Walker was about to get married for a second time
to Ida,
a Filipina, and was “happy to stay at home making my own wine and beer�.

Apart from the odd brush with the authorities, life was good.
Middle-aged men
with middle-ranking jobs and beer bellies had high, tax-free salaries, young
wives and enjoyed a lifestyle they could only dream about in Britain. At the
time of his arrest, Walker had “spent a lot on the garden and the swimming
pool and was thinking of settling down to save for retirement�.

They drank away their nights at the Celtic Corner, the Empire and the Tudor
Rose. The Empire fielded a football team — the “Fat Bastards� — who
played for charity. One landlord even gave money to the poor at a local
mosque.
“It was all very friendly and fun,� said Mitchell.


THE fun came to an end in a bombing campaign that began in late 2000. On
November 17 Christopher Rodway, a British engineer, was killed and his wife
Jane was injured when a bomb planted in their car exploded as they
stopped at
traffic lights in Riyadh.

Five days later three more Britons and an Irishman were injured as they
drove
to a party from one of Riyadh’s many illegal drinking dens. The next month a
British manager with Coca-Cola was blinded in the port city of al-Khobar
when a
bomb in a drinks carton exploded on his windscreen.

In hindsight, the attacks followed a pattern. Rodway was driving an American
GMC Jimmy 4x4. The Britons on their way to a party had just left a compound
previously occupied by Americans. David Brown, the Coca-Cola man, worked
for a
US company.

But at the time the world was unaware of the seething resentment brewing
against Americans, which led a year later to the September 11 attacks in
America masterminded by Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi.

While there were rumours from the outset that the bombing campaign was
the act
of political dissidents — terrorists who bombed a shopping centre allegedly
left a note condemning the royal family — the acutely embarrassed Saudi
authorities flatly refused to acknowledge that there might be opposition
to the
regime.

Instead they insisted that rival gangs of bootleggers were engaged in a
“turf
war� and that westerners were pitted against one another in a struggle for
control of the profits from illegal booze.

This convenient fiction led to the arrest of men who were admittedly ducking
and diving around the strict anti- alcohol laws but who were not engaged in
violence. Under Saudi procedures, no evidence was required apart from the
confessions of the accused. The price of apparent political stability
was the
wrongful conviction of innocent men.

“The turf war didn’t exist,� said Mitchell. “That was a fallacy made up
by the Saudi secret police to justify their own existence.�

Two days after Rodway was killed, “one of my staff, who had family links to
the secret police, told me that they thought it was a gang of bootleggers. I
said that was ridiculous. But it shows they’d made their minds up about how
to play it straight away. What sort of investigation can you do in two
days?�
When the next bomb went off Raf Schifte, a Belgian trauma nurse, was in
the car
behind the partygoers and gave the driver of the bombed vehicle first aid.

“He probably saved the driver’s life,� said Mitchell. “He told me later
that the secret police had arrived at the scene even before the emergency
services. How did that happen? They told Raf they had a tip-off that
there were
two bombs, so he guided them back to the compound where the cars were
parked.�

In doing so he led them back to the Celtic Corner, which gave the police the
excuse to arrest him on “alcohol-related charges�.

Mitchell was next.

IF his first interrogation was rough, that was just a taste of what was to
come. The night he was arrested, Mitchell was taken home in chains and
had to
watch as his house was ransacked. He was unable to speak to his
terrified wife
other than to tell her to take the baby and run to friends. For the next
nine
days he was chained to a doorway with his hands bound together above his
head.
“I couldn’t sit down, couldn’t rest, couldn’t sleep,� he said. “If
I started to drift, they’d give me a poke to make sure I stayed awake.�

During the night he was questioned. The prisoners would hear the
interrogators
rattling chains as they walked down the corridor. “You were constantly in
fear,� said Mitchell. “You never knew if it was you next.�

In the interrogation room with Ibrahim he was chained by the hand and
ankle and
suspended with a metal bar behind his legs to expose his buttocks and
the soles
of his feet. He was beaten with an axe handle.

“It went on and on,� he said. “I used to consider myself a strong person
but everybody has their breaking point.

“As bad as the beating was, the worst thing was the suggestion that they
were
going to arrest my wife. They said ‘Your wife is a Thai and we can do
anything we want to her’. They did not use the word rape but the threat was
there.�

After each beating he was dragged back to the doorpost. His feet were
swollen
and agonisingly painful. Without sleep he began to feel he was going mad.

“Eventually I said what they wanted. Then they wanted statements. My hands
were so swollen that I had to hold the pen by wrapping my fist around it. I

“I made several ridiculous statements. Then they started saying, ‘You’re
an agent of your embassy, aren’t you?’ I couldn’t believe they wanted to
go down that road. I knew I couldn’t go on.�

He wanted to die. Chained against the doorframe he managed to loosen a 1in
screw and swallow it, hoping to cause internal bleeding: “I thought I would
die, or be taken to hospital and the embassy would somehow hear about me.�

Nothing happened. He tried again, swallowing fragments of a plastic
spoon. The
beatings went on. Eventually he said yes, he was under orders from the
embassy
and invented two handlers, Duncan McDonald and Tom Brook.

The Saudis seemed happy but the beatings went on. “By this time it was just
for pleasure,� said Mitchell. “Ibrahim was a psychopath.�

When he had made his final statement he was transferred to al-Hair
prison. He
was allowed to shower — and when a prison officer saw his body, a doctor was
called. “In prison,� said Mitchell, “I experienced acts of kindness that
gave me strength to carry on.�

After three days’ rest, Ibrahim appeared again. Mitchell was blindfolded and
taken back to an interview room. He was told they needed a film of his
confession to show to Prince Nayef, the interior minister, to appeal for
clemency.

What was made was the now notorious film that was shown on television around
the world. Mitchell confessed in a monotone voice to bombing on the
orders of
the embassy. The story was absurd: people in Britain who knew him were
horrified at his haggard appearance. Some asked if he had been drugged.

It was 42 days after his arrest before he was allowed to see anybody
from the
British embassy. “The vice-consul came. I did not dare tell him about the
beating. I had been told by Ibrahim, ‘Deny your statement and we start all
over again’. But the vice-consul had known me before. He only had to look at
the man I had become to know what had happened.

“My wife visited: both of us just cried.�

Mitchell was at the beginning of 15 months of solitary confinement. In the
first few months he was given no books other than the Koran: he now
knows most
of it by heart.

“You think about your life, the mistakes you’ve made. You just try to live
from day to day. There’s always the fear that they’re coming to get you.
All the time, any time. And I used to think of my son, how he’d grow up. I
believed I’d never see him again.�


Meanwhile, Walker and another friend, Bill Sampson, had been arrested
and were
in nearby cells. In the early days Mitchell had heard Sampson’s screams
as he
was tortured. Walker, older and with a heart condition, confessed after
being
knocked about, fearing what was in store if he did not.

He was accused of planting a bomb in a shopping centre: “I’d read in the
paper that the bomb damaged a postbox. I put that in my statement. I
said what
they wanted to hear.�

The summer after his arrest, Mitchell was suddenly given western clothes and
told that he was going to court to reaffirm his statement. He appeared
in front
of three bearded judges and was asked if he had anything to say. He said
no: he
expected to have some legal representation later on.

He did not realise, he said, that this was his trial. It was only after
almost
a year in prison that he finally saw a lawyer, Sheikh Salah al- Hejailan. He
was given papers for his appeal.

“I didn’t even realise that I’d been convicted,� said Mitchell, “let
alone sentenced. It was too much to take in.�

More was to come. The lawyer said that he had been sentenced to death by
crucifixion. “He said, ‘But it won’t happen’,� said Mitchell. “From
the start he was trying to reassure me.�

This exemplary punishment is rare but has been carried out twice in the
past 20
years — for highway robbery — in a country where public beheadings are a
regular event. Mitchell was overcome with horror. Despite the lawyer’s
assurances, he remained under sentence of a horrible death.

“I had to try to be strong,� he said. “I’m a religious person and I
used to think, you can take my head but you won’t take my soul.�

Slowly, as the political situation outside began to change, his treatment
improved. He was given books. The bombings continued and Ibrahim came
back to
question him — claiming that Mitchell must have more “cells� on the
outside — but did not use violence.

One day his cell door opened and there stood his friend Walker. “It was
as if
all my Christmases had come at once,� said Mitchell. “We spoke for 20 hours
non-stop.�

Over the following months the men gave each other invaluable support.
There was
no privacy, with two video cameras trained on them at all times and
fluorescent
lighting burning 24 hours a day. They slept on thin foam mattresses on a
stone
platform.

They played hundreds of games of Scrabble. Mitchell used to make up words,
infuriating Walker. They even managed the odd joke. When Mitchell was
annoyed
at losing, Walker said: “Well, don’t lose your head.�

In June last year they were given a television and when they saw that
suicide
bombers were at work in Riyadh, they knew the game was up. “There was no way
they could go on pretending these bombs were planted by us. One of the
prison
officers said to us, ‘We know you didn’t do it’. That gave us courage,
knowing that there were Saudis who weren’t buying this bullshit,� said
Mitchell.

“I know the people who did this to me aren’t typical of the Saudis. I loved
Saudi. I’d like to think the Saudi government didn’t know what was being
done to me. I’d like to hold out an olive branch to the Saudi government. We
all make mistakes and learn from them.�

Colonel Said, the prison governor, “was a civilised man, a good-hearted
man�, said Mitchell. “By the end we used to joke with him that we were
digging an escape tunnel with our plastic spoons.�

A month ago Said told them they were going home. “I didn’t believe it at
first. For so long people had been saying, ‘Only another couple of weeks and
you’ll be out’, and nothing happened. It felt strange walking out the
door.�

Mitchell, Walker and Sampson — who had spent the entire time in solitary,
refusing to cooperate and smearing his cell with faeces — were put on a
plane
to England. The official line was unbending: the men were guilty and
only free
thanks to Nayef’’s mercy.

“I kept thinking about my son. He wouldn’t know me. He was just a baby when
I was arrested. I thought he’d be shy but he just came running into my arms.
I cried like a child.�

It was a harsh homecoming. Mitchell, his wife and child have been living
in a
basement room at his sister’s house in Yorkshire. His sister ran up a
“huge� overdraft campaigning for him and he is almost destitute. Social
services have not yet sorted out income support for him and when he pleaded
with the local job centre that he had no money or clothes he was told to try
the Salvation Army.

“I just have to start again,� he said. “I’ll never get my life back,
not the life I had, anyway. So I have to find a new one. For my family I’ve
got to be strong.�

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspap...806804,00.html

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