JEDDAH, 26 February 2004 — Saudi Arabia yesterday again rejected torture claims by two Britons and a Canadian, and said that threats of legal action by the three were being encouraged by greedy lawyers.
The men were convicted of carrying out bombings in the Kingdom and have said they are going to sue the Saudi interior minister.
“I don’t know if the lawsuits are their own idea but there is a tendency in the West for lawyers in search of financial gain to look for such problems,” Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told reporters.
Lawyers said in London on Monday that the three men had filed a claim in the British courts for damages against Interior Minister Prince Naif, two Saudi interrogators and the deputy governor of the prison where they were held for two-and-a-half years.
The suit may even extend to a lawsuit against the Kingdom as a whole according to Mark Emery, a lawyer for Sandy Mitchell, Les Walker, and Canadian William Sampson, who were pardoned by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd last August. “It is certainly possible we are going to sue the state. We are very much of the opinion that might occur at some point,” he said.
“What can one say about these lawsuits other than that they are unfair?” Prince Saud said, pointing to the fact that although convicted of the crimes, the three had been pardoned. “They were set free after pleas from their families” to King Fahd, and both the families and the men themselves had thanked the Saudi government after their release.
Prince Saud said that the three would not win. “The lawsuit is not serious in my opinion and will not succeed in court. We wish they had not taken such measures because, in truth, the Kingdom acted with the utmost sympathy and consideration for their condition and that of their families,” he added.
Saudi lawyer Salah Al-Hujeilan, who won the prisoners’ release, said they should have been grateful to the Kingdom’s authorities for the way they handled the “complex case.”
