FOUR Britons who claim that they were tortured by officials in Saudi Arabia into confessing to a bombing campaign have lost their right to sue through the British courts.

The men, who say that their interrogators used rape, beatings, and suspended them from iron bars in order to force false statements, cannot seek compensation after a House of Lords ruling yesterday.

Sandy Mitchell, Les Walker and William Sampson were arrested after a series of terrorist bombings in the Saudi cities of Riyadh and Khobar in 2000 and 2001. A fourth Briton, Ron Jones, was seized after being injured in a bomb blast outside a bookshop.

Speaking after the ruling by the law lords, Mr Jones said that the Government had backed another nation’s right to torture British citizens.

“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, a solicitor representing Mr Mitchell, Mr Sampson and Mr Walker, said: “Our clients, who were all so severely tortured in a Saudi Arabian prison that they suffered damage to their hearts and permanent debilitating psychiatric damage, have been told that they are not entitled to bring compensation proceedings in the UK against the men who tortured them.”

The men were arrested in 2001. Mr Jones, from Crawley, West Sussex, said that he confessed after being punched and beaten as well as being hung from his cell bars for days.

He said that his hands and feet were caned and beaten with a pickaxe handle, and that he had been subjected to sleep deprivation, beatings and psychological duress. Mr Mitchell, from Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, has described how he was punched, kicked, spat at and eventually beaten with sticks.

“They had this axe handle and I was beaten on the soles of my feet. I was hung upside down with chains on my ankles and wrists, and a bar placed behind my knees.

“I was hoisted up, exposing the soles of my feet, and my buttocks and I was just beaten continuously,” he said.

Mr Sampson said that he was raped while in jail.

The Britons claim that they were forced to enact televised confessions, along with two other men, in which they used models and maps to show how they had organised a bombing campaign linked to the illicit alcohol trade. Mr Mitchell and Mr Sampson were sentenced to death and the other men were jailed for 18 years.

The men were released two years later after an al-Qaeda suicide bomb attack in Riyadh in May 2003 appeared to disprove Saudi claims that the bombings were part of a turf war.

A Court of Appeal ruling in 2004 that the men could sue the Saudis was described by civil rights lawyers as an historic victory, ending immunity for torturers abroad.

But Saudi Arabia appealed to the Lords, arguing that its officials were protected by the State Immunity Act 1978.

Yesterday’s ruling led to anger from human rights campaigners who claimed that the Government intervened to support the Saudis.

Simon Carruth, of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, said: “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.”

Tony Blair defended the Government’s intevention in the House of Commons yesterday.

“We intervened in this particular case in order to ensure that the rules of international law and state immunity are fully and accurately presented and upheld,” he said.

Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf al-Saud, the Saudi Ambassador to the UK, welcomed the ruling. “The principles are well entrenched in UK law and as such the judgment of the House of Lords does not come as a surprise in a country known for its fair legal system and respect for the rule of law.”

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