Saudi Justice? - 60 Minutes

[dArKeR]

Why did the Government of Saudi Arabia frame seven westerners for a series of car bombings they didn't commit?

Those car bombings, which began in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in November 2000, killed three members of the expatriate community and severely injured several others. To Western observers, they were clearly the work of Islamic fundamentalists.

But the Saudis were not about to admit that. So five Britons, a Canadian and a Belgian found themselves arrested, systematically tortured into false confessions and eventually convicted of those bombings.

Since the release of the men from a Saudi Arabian jail last summer, it's emerged that the Saudis were secretly using them as pawns in a bigger game - a game that for two of the men almost ended in a terrible death. Correspondent Ed Bradley reports.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/60minutes/main615986.shtml

[UpInArms]

1. torture is such a subjective word

/sarcasm

“It initially started with punchings and kickings, and that progressed from beating me on the soles of my feet to being hung upside down in a position known as the chicken -- with your feet uppermost and your feet and backside exposed, readily available for beating,” says Sampson. “And between interrogation sessions, I was returned to the same cell and handcuffed to the door, so I couldn't sit down and I couldn't sleep.”

He said that after being beating on the soles of his feet and chained to the door, he stood in agony: “There’s no way you can, I could even kneel down in that position, and so I'd be standing on my feet which were swollen, so badly swollen that they were actually exuding plasma through the skin.”

How long did it take before he confessed? “On the night of the sixth day is when I started to confess, when I would, I couldn't take any more,” says Sampson. “At that stage, I mean, I used to pray that, I would pray during the beatings that I would black out, and I never did. And by that stage, I was actually praying that I would just die.”

Are these perhaps also the techniques that our military has been using?

[Wright Patman]

3. Saudis 'just blowing off steam'

Fraternity hazing rituals and all that. Merely Wahhabi hijinks. Get over it. Let's move on. Blah, blah, blah.

[daleo]

2. This was a bad story at the time, there is not doubt

We heard plenty about this in Canada, before the people in question were finally released.

But are we going to hear a series of torture stories from other parts of the world (especially the middle east), in an attempt to normalize, or at least take some of the sting out of the events of the U.S. military in Iraq? The implicit message seems to be "others do it too, and are a lot more brutal". Although now that the dog attack pictures are out, even that pathetic justification rings hollow.

It is sad if that is what it has come to.

[BeHereNow]

4. I imagine Sibel Edmunds has some thoughts about it...

I read the interview someone posted here recently-
She intimates in the interview certain connections to
911, "other countries" and very high profile individuals
in this country and that they will stop at nothing to
prevent the whole story coming out.
Vinell Corp and the Bushies, anyone?
BHN