Death Penalty for Briton Poses Saudi Dilemma

CAIRO — Imagine two Saudis convicted of killing a foreigner in the United States.

If one defendant was ordered to die and the second sent to prison, igniting a public uproar in Saudi Arabia, would President Clinton respond to Saudi pressure and grant clemency to maintain harmony with an important ally?

Perhaps. But would he do so even if he knew he would be seen as soft on crime by a law-and-order-minded U.S. public, and if the victim’s only relative was making repeated public calls for the death penalty?

That is roughly the dilemma that Saudi King Fahd and his advisors face in the case of two British nurses convicted in the December murder of an Australian colleague in the eastern city of Dhahran. According to statements by attorneys, one has been given the death sentence and the second is to be imprisoned for eight years and flogged 500 times.

As monarch, Fahd will have to decide whether to sign an execution order.

The case has set into motion a blizzard of outraged demands in Britain for diplomatic action to spare the nurses, culminating in an extraordinary meeting Friday in New York between British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal to discuss the issue.

If Deborah Parry, 39, a native of the south of England, is led out to a public square in a black cloak and decapitated with a single sword blow to the back of her neck--the usual Saudi procedure--it will be the first known case of a Westerner, let alone a Western woman, being put to death under the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law.

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Such an event would have shattering repercussions in Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Britain, and the kingdom’s desire to be seen as a civilized, modern state would undoubtedly suffer in Europe and the United States as well.

Yet Saudi authorities believe in their system and intend to stand by it. They point out that they are far from alone in the use of capital punishment, and they see beheading as a quick and humane death compared with the hanging, electrocution and poison gas used in some Western countries.

“I am very surprised to be asked to comment on a judgment that has not been rendered,” the Saudi ambassador to Britain, Ghazi Algosaibi, said last week. “I was even more surprised when some saw fit to demean our Islamic justice system.

“We’re not going to change our system or our religion or our customs to appeal to journalists or to bleeding-heart liberals of the media all over the world,” he said in one televised interview.

From the beginning, the Yvonne Gilford murder case has been a hot potato.

Saudi Arabian officials understood that their system would be put under a microscope by the Western world, which they regard as ignorant of and biased against their Islamic beliefs. The case has been so sensitive that the verdict itself was kept under wraps. Although legal sources have been speaking since mid-August of a guilty verdict against both nurses, no decision has been formally announced.

But lawyers in the case revealed last week that Parry faces execution after having been found guilty by the trial panel of murder, while Lucille McLauchlan has been found guilty of a lesser charge of assisting in the crime. Under Saudi law, the death sentence must be confirmed by at least two higher courts before going to the king himself.

In murder cases, death is the requisite sentence if the victim’s family demands it. The sentence for McLauchlan, however, was at the judges’ discretion. Under Islamic law, her 500 lash strokes should be administered with a bent elbow, should not bruise or break the skin, and normally would be doled out over the course of her jail sentence.

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Officials in Britain, Saudi Arabia and Australia are engaged in a delicate minuet to seek an outcome that would take into account the British pleas for mercy, the demand for punishment from Gilford’s brother and the Saudis’ need to adhere to their own centuries-old, religion-based system of justice.

Did Parry, 39, with the help of McLauchlan, 31, stab, bludgeon and suffocate Gilford, 55, at the King Fahd Military Medical Complex where they all worked and lived? Because the trial was not open to the public, there is no way to independently evaluate the evidence.

Various Saudi newspapers have stated the basic case against the accused. They say that the two women initially confessed to investigators after being photographed by security cameras one day after the murder using the victim’s credit cards to get cash from an automated teller machine.

In their confession, according to the published reports, the two said they had been lovers of Gilford and that the murder occurred during an argument on a night of heavy drinking. Adding to suspicions, McLauchlan previously had been accused in her native Scotland of taking the credit card of a terminally ill patient.

The women say that the case against them is a total frame-up, according to their lawyers and family. The women say their supposed confessions were forced from them through sleep deprivation, physical abuse and fear that they would be raped by interrogators who ordered them to strip naked and touched them during questioning, and who promised them freedom if they signed confessions.

Once they obtained lawyers, they retracted their confessions. They complained that they never had a chance, as they would in a Western court, to examine the evidence against them, to present their own evidence and to call witnesses to exonerate themselves and raise the possibility that someone else--for instance, Saudi guards working at the medical complex--had committed the crime.

Their fate has been controlled by a legal system that is radically different from Western models. Although suspects are considered innocent until proved guilty, the Sharia system relies far less on physical evidence than on the statements of the accused and the questions posed by the judges.

Its roots lie in the belief that cleric-scholars using the Koran and the acts of the prophet Muhammad as their guide will, through patient listening and questioning, get to the truth of any issue, and if they err they must answer to Allah in the hereafter.

Murder is a special case in Islamic law, because it is not only the state that prosecutes the accused but the victim’s survivors. On conviction, the victim’s family is compensated for the loss of its valuable member--which can mean one life for a life. But survivors are also encouraged by the court to be merciful and accept “blood money” instead.

Although foreigners are often executed in Saudi Arabia, accounting for about two-thirds of those put to death annually, they are usually Asian or African workers convicted of drug smuggling or homicide.

No European or American has ever been beheaded in Saudi Arabia, and indications are that Parry also is likely to escape that fate.

The respected Saudi-owned newspaper Al Hayat on Sunday quoted a judicial source as saying an execution would be ruled out for Parry if, as now appears true, Gilford’s brother in Australia has begun bargaining for a possible financial settlement.

According to published accounts, Frank Gilford has entered negotiations for a $1.2-million settlement--$700,000 for him and $500,000 for charity. That might be an outcome that all parties could live with.