Britons lose Saudi torture case

I reported here about Blair's attempts to protect foreign torturers from ever being brought to justice.

Well, yesterday Blair and others succeeded in their aims after the House of Lords ruled that foreign states and their officials enjoyed immunity from civil actions.

It was decided that four Britons, who say they were tortured by Saudi Arabia, have no right to bring any civil action against that state.

What's shocking is the British government itself intervened in this case on the side of Saudi Arabia.

Blair said yesterday in the Commons, that the government had only intervened in the case "to ensure that rules of international law and state immunity are fully and accurately presented and upheld. We utterly condemn [torture] in every set of circumstances."

It's ironic that the man who ripped up international law in order to invade Iraq should now intervene to see that it is upheld to ensure that torturers of British citizens do not face prosecution. And it's simply laughable that a man who aids the US as it operates a process of extraordinary rendition should claim that he "utterly condemns torture in every set of circumstances".

Mr Sampson, Mr Walker and the anaesthetist Sandy Mitchell were arrested five years ago and accused of being responsible for a series of terrorist bomb attacks. Mr Jones was injured in one of the attacks but held for 67 days and tortured before his release. The Saudi authorities claimed the men were part of an alcohol turf war between expatriates at a time when the kingdom was seeking to disguise the extent of home-grown Islamist militancy.

Mr Sampson and Mr Walker - who were sentenced to death by partial beheading and crucifixion - and Mr Mitchell made televised confessions which they say were beaten out of them. All three were set free in 2003 without explanation. The case was the first time that the Lords had looked at the issue of whether a foreign country could claim state immunity over civil proceedings brought against its officials for torture.

The judgment followed an appeal by the Saudi government against a court of appeal decision in October 2004 allowing the men to sue officials for damages. Five law lords agreed that the officials were protected by the 1978 State Immunity Act from proceedings brought in this country.

Lord Bingham said in his lead judgment that the issue at the heart of the case was the relationship between two principles of international law. One was that a sovereign state will not assert its judicial authority over another.

The second, and more recent, principle was one that condemned and criminalised the official practice of torture. He concluded: "A state is either immune from the jurisdiction of a foreign court or it is not. There is no halfway house and no scope for the exercise of discretion." Lord Hoffmann said: "It is not for a national court to develop international law by unilaterally adopting a version of that law which, however desirable, forward-looking and reflective of values it may be, is simply not accepted by other states."

But Lord Bingham did offer a crumb of comfort for the future. The law was in a state of flux, he said, and "it may very well be that the claimants' contention will come to represent the law of nations, but it cannot be said to do so now".

One can only hope that the views of Lord Bingham are one day realised.

The law as it currently stands gives a citizen no right to prosecute a foreign power, even when that power has subjected that citizen to torture.

That is simply wrong. And the law, in this regard, should be changed.

And Bush and Blair, who both support the current Saudi regime, have some very strange bedfellows as they seek to export "our values" around the globe.

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