I though they were our friends?

Sandy Mitchell lived a two and a half year nightmare in a Saudi prison being beaten and tortured. He had committed no crime and was eventually released, after signing a letter thanking the King for his 'clemency':

He still feels nothing but hatred for the men who tortured him - "they will burn in hell for what they did to me" - but, as he writes in his new book, co-written with Mark Hollingsworth and published this week, he's also very bitter about the way he has been treated by the British government. "The fact that I and the other Britons who were picked up and tortured were released had very little to do with any activity from the British government. The Americans got Mike Sedlak [a US citizen also arrested for the bombing] released within two months. We had to wait nearly three years. Why? Simply because our government is terrified of upsetting the Saudis. They'd rather help British businessmen sign arms deals with the Saudis than stop British people being tortured by them."

What irks him most is that the Foreign Office still hasn't made a public statement in which they proclaim Mr Mitchell and the other men's total innocence and criticise the Saudi Arabians for framing and torturing them. "They won't do it," he says. "The Saudi version of what happened is blatantly ridiculous. Yet the Foreign Office won't contradict it."

Even worse, the British government is supporting the Saudi Arabian government in its appeal to the Law Lords to overturn the decision by three judges on the Court of Appeal to allow Mr Mitchell and the other tortured Britons to sue the Saudi Arabians for compensation. "Jack Straw says that it would be a violation of state sovereignty. He says that the principle that states can't be sued in national courts is one that it is in the interest of Britain to protect - so sorry, we're supporting the Saudis on this one. It's disgusting."

Once again we bend over backwards so as not to upset this bunch of crooks.

Read the whole sickening story HERE.