JEDDAH: Thirty years after falling from the sixth floor of a flat on Jeddah's King Fahd Street, a British nurse is finally to be buried in Yorkshire next month.

For three decades the body of Helen Smith has lain in a mortuary in a Leeds hospital, kept there as evidence at the insistence of her 81-year-old father, Ron Smith.

"There will never be any closure. Helen's remains must, I agree, be disposed of, as they say in legal terms. But I will never accept that there has been no cover-up, or (give up) this cause for which I have been fighting the past 30 years," Smith told reporters in the UK after reaching his decision.

Smith always maintained that there had been a cover-up by British and Saudi officials. His battle for an inquest by an independent examiner brought about a change in British law for all Britons who died violent or unnatural deaths abroad.

The Smith family has started arrangements for a funeral. "My ex-wife said that while her and her children see no fault in my fight for truth, she felt we should organize the funeral while we were both still alive," Smith said. "Looking at it logically and dispassionately, I must agree."

"The reaction from the British community was that there had been a cover up," said Bill (not his real name), a British expat who was in the Kingdom at the time of the investigations and who spoke to Arab News yesterday about the affair. "The reaction of the Saudi police was to arrest large numbers of people and release them after clearing them. Their lack of transparency didn't help; it fuelled all sorts of conspiracy theories."

Helen Smith was employed at the Bakhsh hospital in Jeddah in spring 1979 when she was invited to a party held in the flat of Dr. Richard Arnot and his wife, Penny. Alcohol was served at the gathering in the form of homemade wine, gin and black-market whisky. The group, including middle-aged Frenchman Jacques Texier, a young, blonde New Zealander Tim Hayter, tug-boat captain Dutchman Johannes Otten and six German divers who had accompanied him partied until early morning.

The following morning, the body of Smith was found on the concrete 20m below the Arnots' balcony and close by her was the body of seaman Otten, impaled on iron railings mounted on a perimeter wall.

A Saudi investigation at the time found the pair had fallen from the balcony while having sex and concluded that the deaths were accidental.

Pathologists found Smith to have injuries consistent with a fall from a moderate height, and other injuries unrelated to the cause of death that indicated "some form of rough handling or assault prior to death."

Ron Smith traveled to Jeddah four days after receiving the news of his daughter's death determined to conduct his own investigations. The publicity surrounding the event raised the profile from accident to a scandal that, he claimed, could "bring down the government." He claimed the body had evidence of a crime that he maintained for three decades took place and was covered up.

Smith's ex wife Jeryl, 71, now living in a retirement community in the US, said that 30 years on Ron Smith has a 62-page dossier containing medical statements from private specialists and evidence that he insists backs up his claim that Helen was raped and murdered and that the truth has been concealed in a conspiracy that includes "politicians, civil service mandarins and a CIA official."