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Rights Group Criticizes Saudi Over Western Bombing Suspects
CAIRO, Feb 11 (IslamOnline) - Human Rights Watch said this week that Saudi Arabia did not follow internationally accepted legal procedures in arresting three men accused of killing one Briton and injuring several others in November.
Three foreign residents of the desert Arab kingdom were shown on Saudi television on February 4th confessing to two car bombings, but did not say what their motives were or who ordered them to carry out the violent acts.
In an interview with the daily Riyadh Newspaper, Interior Minister Naif bin Abdel Aziz said last week that Riyadh will only apply Islamic Sharia' against the three suspects.
In a press release obtained by IslamOnline, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the confessions were made after the detainees "were held in prolonged incommunicado detention." The group also criticized the Saudi authorities for airing the confessions before the investigation was completed.
"Confessions obtained in such circumstances should not be admissible in court," said Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of HRW. "The defendants should be questioned again in the presence of their lawyers to ensure that their statements were not obtained under duress."
Human Rights Watch called on Saudi authorities to end what it called "the routine practice of incommunicado detention," and to provide all detainees with "access to lawyers during the criminal investigation process, including interrogation."
The organization also said that the governments of detained foreign nationals should be promptly informed following arrests and permitted immediately to communicate with them.
Campaigners for fair trials have raised concerns over the circumstances in which the alleged confessions were made.
The three suspects were shown describing how they planted the bombs and used remote control devices to detonate the explosives. They also gave details of how they located victims and their choice for bombing locations.
On November 17th, Briton Christopher Rodway, 47, was killed and his wife, Jane, 50, slightly injured when their car was blown up, in what police say appeared to be a booby trap.
Two Britons and an Irish woman were wounded, two of them only slightly, when their car exploded on November 22nd in the Saudi capital.
Those arrested and who confessed to the bombings are British national Alexander Houton Mitchell and Belgian Raf Skivens, both of whom worked in a military hospital in Saudi Arabia. The third arrested, a Canadian, William Sampson, worked as a marketing consultant for the Saudi Development Fund.
Abdel Aziz said Saudi authorities also arrested nine other suspects of different nationalities.
A spokesman for Amnesty International has said of the TV confessions: "Secrecy, torture and unfair trials are the hallmarks of Saudi justice."
Under Sharia' law, the death sentence of a convicted murderer can be commuted if the victim's family accepts payment of "diya", or blood money.
There has been increasing speculation in Saudi Arabia that the bomb attacks committed by the accused were part of a personal vendetta - or linked to alcohol smuggling rings organized by foreign nationals.
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