Margaret Beckett is a heartless, lying, cowardly ,calculating bitch

Geoffrey Bindman is a solicitor, he received a knighthood in the 2007 New Year's honours list for services to human rights. He represents Sandy Mitchell, (pic BBC) Bill Sampson and Leslie Walker who were arrested in Saudi Arabia, tortured and signed false confessions for bombings and murder of a UK citizen Christopher Rodway, at whose inquest held at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, in 2005 the coroner accepted their innocence.

The "confessions", were videoed and shown on Saudi State TV, they ludicrously claimed that they had been acting on the instructions of named officials of the British embassy. A sham trial resulted in Sandy and Bill to be sentenced to execution by crucifixion.

After much intergovernmental and secret wrangling and 3 years in jail they were released in August 2003. British ministers had applied some pressure for their release, but the key was a US Government agreement to exchange them for 4 Saudis held at Guantanamo Bay released in May 14th 2003. (See Wapo story 6/7/2004)

The men are broken, jobless, unemployable. They seek compensation. No one, no UK minister doubts the men's innocence

In November 2006, Bindman met Margaret Beckett - then finding her feet as the new Foreign Secretary. In preparatory remarks she explained her naive and simplistic approach: never pursue a course of action that you know is bound to fail.

Simply , the Saudis were not going to budge, her time was too precious to waste convincing them. The king she was told still believed the men were guilty. If an opportunity arose she would pass on our concern to the Saudis. It was evident that she felt no obligation to persuade him that he had been misinformed.

Geoffrey Bindman says " ....... far from helping their citizens to get justice, the UK government has hindered them in a number of ways. Most remarkably in our particular case, it intervened on the side of the Saudis."


Saudis expect Eurofighters 'soon' Sunday 7th Jan 2007 BBC Online

There were fears the Eurofighter deal could be lost.
Saudi Arabia has said it will start taking deliveries of 72 Eurofighter jets (US$16.6Bn) from UK defence company BAE Systems "very soon".

Read more at New Statesman Saudi torture: a Whitehall cover-up by Geoffrey Bindman