Torture victims' long fight for justice

Sandy Mitchell and his 3-year-old daughter Tara. Photo / Angela Catlin

What disturbed Sandy Mitchell most is that when the Islamic call to prayer came his torturers would stop, wash for prayers then leave for a while before returning and resuming where they had left off.

"I guess to them praying to the most merciful did not mean complying with the teaching of the most merciful," says the 55-year-old Scotsman. Mitchell is speaking ahead of the 10th anniversary of his imprisonment and torture in a Saudi Arabian prison.

Raised in Kirkintilloch, Scotland, he was one of eight westerners accused of bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia in 2000 and for 32 months was held in a Riyadh prison for a murder he did not commit. The killing he was accused of was that of British engineer Christopher Rodway, who died in a bomb blast in November 2000. Mitchell was arrested shortly afterwards and tortured until he confessed to the crime. He was sentenced to death by crucifixion after a 10-minute secret trial.

Ten years on, he and the other innocent men jailed are still seeking justice for the ruination of their lives.

"It all began at 7am on December 17, 2000, when I arrived at the hospital in Riyadh where I was chief anaesthetic technician.

"I remember being flung against my vehicle by men who'd arrived in two cars. They pulled a hood over my head and manacled me with ankle chains and handcuffs," he says. Mitchell was taken to the Mabatha Interrogation Centre, a facility on the outskirts of Riyadh dubbed the "Confession Factory".

When the hood was removed Saudi policemen had stripped him to the waist and taken him to another room where he was left alone with two men who would be his torturers.

Then the violence began. Punches and kicks knocked out Mitchell's teeth. He was battered around the head. The beatings were relentless.

"Tell us who ordered the bombing. You are going to confess. We can do anything to you."

His interrogators, who called themselves Khaled and Ibrahim, seemed to revel in their work. At times, Mitchell would be suspended upside-down with his legs over a steel bar while they battered his body and feet with the handle of a pick axe.

They would cover him in their spit. "Who gave you the orders to carry out the bombings?" Khaled screamed.

At one point, disoriented and on the verge of passing out, Mitchell's mind had turned to mediaeval times, when women were tortured until they confessed to witchcraft. It was ironic, he thought, that sorcery was still punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

He says that he will never forget Christmas Day 2000.

"I was chained to a steel door in a filthy cell. My clothes were soaked with my own vomit, blood and faeces.

"My torturers broke me to the point where I would agree to almost all their demands, and say anything. When I offered proof of my innocence this only infuriated my torturers to inflict further pain until I was too afraid and humiliated to offer further resistance," he said.

During that period, six Britons in total - Mitchell, James Cottle, James Lee, Les Walker, Glenn Ballard and Peter Brandon - as well as Belgian, Raf Schyvens, and Canadian, Bill Sampson, were imprisoned after being accused of orchestrating a violent turf war over bootleg alcohol.

Although Mitchell did admit running an illicit drinking club, he claimed the Saudi authorities were covering up the work of Islamic terrorists.

After his confession, he was sentenced to a punishment under Sharia law called al-hadi, which involves being tied to a wooden cross and then partially beheaded. The body is left to rot in public for several days as a warning to others.

The men were only given a royal pardon and released following an al-Qaeda attack in May 2003 when nine suicide bombers targeted a compound in Riyadh. Thirty-five people died and 200 were injured.

Two days after the raid five Saudis were transferred from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for the Britons' release.

Mitchell had spent 15 of his 32 months in prison in solitary confinement.

After his release, he retracted his confession and in February 2005 an inquest into Rodway's death formally exonerated him and Sampson of the murder.

"But for the grace of God I would have been one of countless tortured victims executed and forgotten in Saudi Arabia.

"A question I frequently ask myself and anyone who will listen, is how many innocent souls have confessed to crimes under torture and have been beheaded for crimes they did not commit?

"The physical agony of torture may end upon release from imprisonment but our fear, humiliation, and psychological trauma lies dormant within us.

"We relive the humiliation in our sleep. We have no control when and where the symptoms occur and recur. We live with it as a dormant recurring illness."

Mitchell is still in contact with the other torture victims particularly James Cottle who has also suffered psychologically over the past 10 years.

Their anger has been compounded by the fact the British Government protected Saudi Arabia by making it impossible for them to sue their torturers in a British court.

"On our return to the UK we sued the Saudis and won the right to seek damages in the British Court of Appeal.

"But the British Government - mindful of defence contracts - collapsed under Saudi pressure and granted our Saudi torturers sovereign immunity.

"The British Government traded our human rights to appease Saudi Arabia which has financed Islamic jihadists since the Russian-Afghanistan war in 1979 until the present date.

"Even after the Saudis' lies were exposed, rather than accept their mistake and release us, the Saudi Government wanted their pound of flesh and we were traded for five Saudis (from prominent Saudi families) being held in Guantanamo Bay. Five Saudi suspected jihadists/terrorists were traded for seven innocent, British-born nationals," Mitchell says.

The case has gone to the European Court of Human Rights. The legal argument is the British Government violated the human rights of Mitchell and the others by granting sovereign immunity to their torturers. The case is expected to be heard in early 2011.

With regards to reparations for having suffered torture, the UK Government argues that is already possible under section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the International Criminal Court Act. But Mitchell points out that to get that, the torture survivor has to bring a civil claim for damages that is not possible against most alleged torturers since they are typically state agents with immunity. "Also, a criminal prosecution can only take place if the alleged perpetrator is within the UK's jurisdiction, in effect, physically in the UK. So, unless the perpetrator comes here, a victim won't even have the role of being a witness," he says.

Mitchell adds he was angered recently when he heard British terror suspects who had been held in Guantanamo Bay and tortured by the US military had won huge payouts. He was referring to the UK Government announcing last month it had agreed to pay millions of pounds in compensation to about a dozen men who say they were illegally held at detention camps. All those who will get compensation are either British citizens or UK residents. They claim the authorities knew they were being ill-treated and should have stepped in.

"It is outrageous that the British Government should pay 'hush money' when innocent British nationals were tortured by the Saudi secret police.

"The British Government granted those Saudi torturers sovereign immunity. I don't for one minute begrudge these men compensation but it is sheer hypocrisy on the part of our government.

"It would appear that justice and human rights are little more than slogans to win votes.

"I ask where is the justice for British nationals tortured by Saudi Arabia, a so-called friend of Britain?"

Mitchell now lives in Sowerby, West Yorkshire, England, with his Thai wife, Noi, and their two children, Matthew, 12, and Tara, 5.

He vows he will keep going in his search for justice.

"I just want someone to admit that we were tortured and to say they are sorry. That's all. I just want some closure and some peace of mind."