Westerners Want Justice for Saudi Torture
May 19, 2003 -- Ron Jones was wounded in a bombing in Saudi Arabia, but that was only the beginning of his ordeal.
After a short stay in a local hospital, Jones was detained by Saudi authorities and, he says, tortured.
"They beat me about my body, with their forearms, their fists, they threw me up against the wall. I was hysterical. I couldn't understand what was happening," he said.
The Scotsman soon learned authorities suspected him of being involved in the bombing, and were trying to get him to admit it — even though they never found any evidence.
For three months, Jones got an agonizing, firsthand look at the Saudi judicial system, which is now under particular scrutiny following last week's terror attacks in Riyadh.
Things Are Changing
The FBI has sent a team to Saudi Arabia to assist in the investigation of the car-bombing attacks, but it's not clear how much access it will have to evidence and any suspects. U.S. officials complained that the Saudis withheld information from American investigators following the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military barracks in Dhahran, where 19 U.S. servicemen were killed.
Western governments have long acquiesced in the opaque and often-disturbing nature of Saudi justice, which includes not only torture but indefinite detentions, secret trials and punishments such as whippings, amputations, stonings and beheadings. Due to long-standing ties and the kingdom's vast oil wealth, Western nations have been willing to look the other way.
But that may be about to change.
Many things are different since the Khobar Towers bombing. The attacks of 9/11 put America on the defensive. Not only was security stepped up stateside, but the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were Saudi citizens focused more internernational attention on dissent within the kingdom.
The United States has already announced it will remove its military bases in Saudi Arabia. Established right before the first Persian Gulf War, the bases are no longer needed to guard against Saddam Hussein's regime. Moreover, the presence of U.S. troops on what is considered sacred Islamic ground had inflamed militants such as Osama bin Laden.
It's clear that the U.S. officials do not trust Saudi Arabia to protect Americans in the kingdom. Last week, the United States urged the Saudis to increase security at residential complexes where Americans live, but the warnings went unheeded, officials told ABCNEWS. Now, more than 30 people, including nine Americans, are dead following the car-bombing attacks in Riyadh, and the State Department has ordered nonessential diplomatic personnel to leave Saudi Arabia.
Goverment Can’t or Won’t Help
For Jones, a change in Western attitudes toward Saudi Arabia is long overdue.
Although he is now free, Jones says he worries about the Westerners who are still being detained by the kingdom. And while his government helped him leave Saudi Arabia, and verified his accounts of torture, he is furious that the United Kingdom has done little else.
"To have a government that has done everything that you would expect to have done for a British subject, especially having paid for the tests [to prove his innocence], but then refuse to condemn [the Saudis] — that's just as barbaric."
Jones is now suing the Saudi government for the grave injuries and psychological damage he says he suffered — and, he says, to prevent further injustice.
A Painful Lesson About Falanga
Jones was working as an accountant for a Saudi firm on March 15, 2000, when his ordeal began. He had just left a Riyadh bookstore when a bomb exploded near him.
He woke in a downtown hospital, his body scorched and shrapnel-ridden. But when he recovered, he was not taken home, but to an interrogation center belonging to the Mabaheth, the Saudi equivalent of the Secret Service.
He said he was shackled, handcuffed and blindfolded, and then put into a cell where the windows were boarded and the lights were on 24 hours a day. He was beaten, with the violence intensifying over time.
It started with canes on the soles of his feet, and then progressed to pick-ax handles, Jones said.
His captors worked from his feet to his hands to his buttocks and thighs. It was Jones' introduction to another aspect of life under the Saudi authorities — falanga — a method of torture that leaves victims with no long-term physical signs of abuse.
Jones said he was disoriented, at times left alone for days, at others taken for questioning, and then taken for another session of questioning just 30 minutes later.
It was too much for him to bear. "I just said I did it, but I did not know what I was admitting to," he said. "I just wanted the pain to stop."
After about five weeks, Jones' interrogators were apparently satisfied, and moved him to another center. There, he said he was given time to recuperate before they released him.
But before he was freed, he was told to sign a statement saying the only reason he had confessed was that he couldn't stand being in solitary, and apologizing for lying in his confession.
He was also warned about telling anybody about his experiences in detention. He said he received no apology.
A Futile Fight
Jones is not the only Westerner to tell of abuse at the hands of Saudi authorities — nor is the only one to be disappointed at his government's unwillingness to do more.
Throughout the 1990s, lawyer Leonard Garment tried to sue the Saudi government for torturing Americans.
One of his clients was Scott Nelson, an American who had worked as an engineer in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, until he blew the whistle on superiors who had failed to correct a major hazard in 1984. According to a court document, he was "shackled, tortured and bea[ten]." He was released after 39 days with the help of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
Garment also represented Jim Smrkovski, a language instructor, who was arrested on a false charge of smuggling alcohol into Saudi Arabia in 1985.
In testimony before Congress in May 1991, Smrkovski said one of his interrogators "called me an '[expletive] Jew,' … 'American dog,' and so on."
He said he was also subject to extreme conditions, beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to do kneebends until he collapsed from exhaustion, shocked with electric prods, and had six of his toenails pulled out.
After 454 days of confinement, he was released with the help of then-Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan.
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally prohibits suits in the United States against foreign governments, prevented Nelson and Smrkovski from suing the Saudis.
By 1996, Garment almost convinced Congress to pass a bill that would allow such lawsuits. But the bill that eventually passed only allowed Americans to sue for acts of state violence if the state was part of the State Department's list of "terrorist states." Saudi Arabia is not.
Asked about Saudi-U.S. relations, a State Department spokeswoman said: "We treat these cases on a case-by-case basis, by the person involved and the merits of the case. We wouldn't sacrifice an American citizen's well-being."
Garment, Nelson and Smrkovski eventually gave up their fight. "They ran out of steam. I did. It was enough," Garment said.
Whose Fault?
However, Jones has yet to wage his fight. Despite the warning from his captors, he broke his silence in November 2000, when he saw video of three Westerners confessing to two bombings in Riyadh.
"I knew they had been tortured into confession," Jones said.
But while London's newspapers have clamored for the imprisoned men's release, their supporters say the British government itself has done nothing.
A spokesman for the British Foreign Office told ABCNEWS, "We remain deeply concerned about the men's situation but there is an ongoing judicial system and we can't interfere in the judicial system of a sovereign country."
Riyadh has consistently denied any official program of torture. The Saudi interior minister has claimed there is "no truth" to the most recent allegations, calling them "part of the media campaign against the kingdom."
Last year, the United Nations criticized Saudi Arabia for its human rights records, but Saudi delegates protested that sharia, or Islamic law, expressly forbids torture. The U.N. committee countered that the ban was not expressly reflected in Saudi law.
Jim Smrkovski could not be be reached for comment, but his brother Lonnie, a law enforcement official who hads traveled extensively in the Middle East, said the Saudis "don't bow down to anyone. They use the excuse of their religion for everything."
But Lonnie Smkovski also feels that part of the blame lies with the victims, because they don't realize how little their governments can do for them when they are abroad.
"People have to learn," he said, "when you get on a plane and leave this country, you're at great risk."