For Mitchell, hearing the decision for the first time, it was a moment of chilling despair. “I was devastated,” he says, his voice faltering. “I couldn’t carry on.”
It is 5½ years since Mitchell, an anaesthetic technician, was grabbed off the street by Saudi police and taken to a cell, where he says he was beaten, abused and wrongly accused of involvement in a car bombing that killed Christopher Rodway in November 2000.
Since his release in August 2003, Mitchell, 49, and his fellow prisoners have sought the right to sue their captors. Last Wednesday, the Law Lords announced that the Saudis are protected by state immunity.
“The House of Lords has now set a precedent that any British subject can be tortured overseas and they will not be given the right to sue their tormentors in the British courts,” says Mitchell, sounding weary and deflated. “I felt betrayed when the Saudis did what they did to me, but I never thought I could be betrayed by my own government. I’ve always believed in the rule of law, but we’ve been let down.”
Mitchell, from Kirkintilloch near Glasgow, and the three other men — Les Walker, Ron Jones and Bill Sampson — will now take their case to the European Court of Human Rights. They are backed by human rights groups Amnesty International, the Redress Trust and Interights and Justice.
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At the time of his arrest Mitchell was working at the Security Forces hospital in Riyadh. He has been able to return to some form of working life, but the others, along with three men arrested and allegedly tortured in another case — James Cottle, Peter Brandon and James Patrick Lee — have not been so fortunate. Brandon and Cottle are still receiving long-term medical care.
“They’ve destroyed the lives of these men,” says Mitchell. “I can work part-time but I can’t go back to a proper job in the health service because technically I still have a criminal record. The Foreign Office, for reasons of diplomacy, refuses to say that we’re innocent.”
Rodway died during one of a number of bomb attacks, blamed by the authorities on an alcohol turf war between expats. Mitchell, who had run a small bar, was held in a 5ft by 8ft cell, where he claims he was punched, spat on and had the soles of his feet beaten by pick axe handles. He says he was also hung upside down so they could beat his buttocks and was deprived of sleep.
Sampson, a British Canadian and Mitchell’s friend, was arrested at the same time and alleges he was raped as well as tortured. In February 2001, the two men, along with Belgian doctor Raf Schyvens, made confessions on Saudi television. Six months later, Walker, from the Wirral, Cottle, from Manchester, and Lee delivered similar television confessions, while Brandon, from Cardiff, was also charged. Jones was later seized after being injured in a bomb blast himself. Mitchell and Sampson were sentenced to death, and the others were jailed for 18 years. It wasn’t until August 2003 that the men were released, after Al-Qaeda were blamed for a bomb attack three months earlier.
“You can forget any nonsense about alcohol turf wars,” Mitchell says bitterly. “Christopher Rodway was one of several Britons killed by Islamic militants and the Saudi Arabians made us the scapegoats. I had a meeting with Jack Straw (then the foreign secretary) and he said it’s better for the (British) government to deal with the House of Saud than a radical Islamic regime. I can appreciate that, but at the moment I don’t see the House of Saud as the lesser of two evils.”
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Mitchell now lives in Yorkshire with his wife, Noi, and their children, Matthew, seven, and Tara, 10 months. Last February, a coroner’s inquest cleared him of any involvement in Rodway’s death.
“It'’s become bigger than a personal battle,” he says. “If we don’t stand up to this, other British nationals could be tortured around the world and nobody’s going to be able to help them.”