Lords overturn 'tortured' four's right to sue
Lords overturn 'tortured' four's right to sue
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Wednesday, 14, Jun 2006 01:21
Britain's highest court has today controversially overturned a ruling that permitted three Britons and a Canadian to sue senior Saudi Arabian officials for alleged torture they endured while wrongly detained in prison in the country.
Britons Sandy Mitchell, Les Walker and Ron Jones plus Canadian Bill Sampson all claim to have been subjected to torture after being imprisoned in a Saudi jail following a series of terrorist bombings in the capital Riyadh and in the eastern town of Khobar between 2000 and 2002.
A Court of Appeal ruling in October 2004 had permitted the four to sue for damages after they were released with a royal pardon in May 2003 following an al-Qaida attack in Riyadh which disproved the claim that the four men were behind the other attacks.
But the Law Lords today allowed an appeal by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to prevent this from happening, declaring that Saudi officials should be protected by the 1978 State Immunity Act.
The decision has been met with anger and disappointment by the four men, who will now take their case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Mr Sampson said: "I am not surprised because the Lords were having to make an adjudication based upon law that should have been changed years ago but for the hypocrisy of the Government which is quite happy to maintain the state immunity law denying citizens the right to seek redress against states that torture them."
"We have come to the highest court in the land and we have not received justice," added Mr Jones.
"The case has been looked at from the point of view of the law and not of justice. It is now time for the British government - which intervened to back the law of state immunity - to intervene on our behalf in order to get us some justice."
Tamsin Allen, the lawyer representing the four, explained outside the court that the Law Lords denied the fact that these men had suffered medically-proven "horrific acts of torture in a Saudi jail which have left them with permanent and debilitating physical and psychiatric injuries".
"As a result of today's decision no court will hear their claim for compensation, no-one will be held to account and the men will receive no compensation," she added.
"The same applies to all other UK victims of torture abroad who hope the House of Lords would open the way to redress."
Mr Mitchell, Mr Walker and Mr Sampson spent two-and-a-half years in prison while Mr Jones, who was injured in one of the bomb blasts in Riyadh in 2002, was held for 67 days before being released.
Their abuse in jail allegedly included being regularly beaten on their hands and feet, being suspended by their arms, being deprived of sleep and force-fed drugs.
The news has also been met with discontent by various health organisations such as the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.
Simon Carruth, the group's chief executive, accused the government of "ignoring the suffering of its own citizens to back the servants of a state that routinely uses torture".
"This is against the spirit of the UN Convention Against Torture. The convention makes no mention of civil liability but clearly imposes on states a duty to prevent and punish acts of torture, wherever they occur," he added.
"Saudi Arabia is party to the convention which it conspicuously fails to uphold. Compensation would have had a punitive and deterrent effect.
"In ignoring that fact and backing the Saudi position, the British government has sacrificed the moral rights of its citizens and missed an opportunity to bring pressure to bear on a state guilty of human rights abuses."