Time to reject the Saudi arms deal

“The prisoner is desperately trying to sleep. It is not easy when you are chained to the steel floor of a filthy, damp 5ft x 8ft cell with a television camera in the top left-hand corner observing your every move and fluorescent lights burning night and day. Chained to the top of the door by his right hand, he is forced to stand 24 hours a day and cannot reach his thin foam mattress and plastic water bottle. Even when he goes to the insect-infected toilet - a hole in the floor along the passageway - he can barely sit because he is constantly in chains.

As he half - dozes, eyes heavy with exhaustion, his clothes soaked in blood , faces and vomit, the prisoner can barely believe his situation.”

That prisoner was Sandy Mitchell who was one of a group of Britons who were arrested in Saudi Arabia and accused of bombings that had been carried out by Al Qaeda militants. Hi s captors knew he was innocent but denied him a lawyer for a year, sentencing him to death.

Still let’s hear of interrogation Saudi style;

“As he is dragged along the corridor, Sandy hears the screams of other prisoners. Hauled into the interrogation room upstairs, the hood is removed and he is ordered to stand for the next 20 minutes. Then whack! Suddenly a punch to the stomach almost doubles him up in pain. As he drops to his knees, he is pulled up by his wrist chains and slammed against the wall, still blindfolded and with his handcuffs on. The punches pile in - to his face, groin and kidney. He raises his hands to protect his face, blood pours out of his left ear, but he just receives more blows to his body. Defenceless and helpless, he collapses to the floor.”

These descriptions are to be found in Saudi Babylon; Torture and Cover -Up in the House of Saud written by Sandy Mitchell and Mark Hollingsworth. The book is one of the most disturbing I have ever read both with regards to the brutality with which the Saudi regime treats even the citizens of a friendly country and even more so with regards to the British Government's failure to stand up for its citizens.

Sandy Mitchell and his fellow prisoners live with the scars of the evil that was inflicted on them by one of the nastiest, most corrupt regimes in the world. Yet, Britain still seems to be led by those who are only to quick to fall to their knees before Saudi princes. In large part this is because of the lucrative arms trade which is so assiduously promoted within the Ministry of Defence by the likes of British Aerospace.

Under Tony Blair, the British Government showed its unsavoury colours by first intervening to block legal moves against the torturers and tehn by suppressing the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribes being paid by British Aerospace to Saudi princes. After the ending of the SFO investigation I remember hearing a Labour MP on Newsnight expressing his delight as this would enable future arms deals to go ahead. That night, I realised that the rule of law in Britain has been reduced to a meaningless slogan - well at least for the rich and powerful.

Now, we hear that little has changed under conviction politician Gordon Brown for we are now to now to sell fighter planesto the Saudis for about £4.4 billion. Maintenance and training may up the worth of the deal to £20 billion.

Were I not a Christian, I think the Saudi princes would be high on my list of those who should be hanging from lamp posts. As a Christian, I feel that the time has surely arrived when we should stop turning the other way at the crimes of the House of Saud. This will only happen when we abandon our arms trade with them and seek useful work for those who aork in the arms trade. It will only happen when we break ranks with the efforts of the USA to turn the Middle East into an armed madhouse.

Given that a junior member of the government visited this site yesterday, I would say to him and others that to sell fighter jets to this bunch of violent crook is about as sane as arming street gangs with guns and knives. It is a nonsense. Better would be to honour the likes of Sandy Mitchell and to stop this trade which makes us accomplices in bloodshed.