William Sampson was in town this week to promote his new book and pay a courtesy visit to the Saudi embassy. He knocked and stood politely at the door of the embassy's expansive new complex until it was opened a crack and he was told to get off the property. That is about the greeting he expected, given the accusations he has levelled against the Saudis in his book, a searing account of his 963-day imprisonment and torture in its jails.
Mr Sampson is a dual British-Canadian citizen who worked in Saudi Arabia as a business development consultant in pharmaceuticals. In the autumn of 2000, bombs exploded in two vehicles, killing an engineer from Britain and injuring several others. Mr Sampson and five British expatriates were arrested soon after and charged with the bombings.
Within a couple of months of his arrest, Mr Sampson and two others appeared on Saudi television and made full confessions. They were then tried in secret and sentenced to death by beheading. The confessions were suspect from the moment they were aired, and reports in the Canadian and British media quickly began circulating that the men had been mercilessly tortured. That gave momentum to a campaign that had been launched to secure their release.
Although he fully expected to be executed, Mr Sampson and his co-accused were suddenly 'pardoned' on August 8, 2003. His physical condition made it clear that he had endured harrowing torture. When he finally spoke publicly about his ordeal, he was unsparing in his criticism of the Saudis. He also said Canadian diplomats based in Riyadh had been much more concerned about maintaining friendly ties with the Saudis than about his plight.
Mr Sampson has since launched a civil suit against the Saudis and his book, Confessions of an Innocent Man, is filled with appalling details of the sadistic beatings and repeated rapes he suffered at the hands of his jailers. His story is an indelible stain on the reputation of the desert kingdom, one that no amount of diplomacy or public relations puffery will erase.
It is now abundantly clear that his arrest and trial were at best the work of incompetents, at worst a calculated effort to convince the Saudi people and their rulers that only foreigners were capable of acts of terror.
