The first time Deborah Parry heard she had been condemned to death by public beheading was on her transistor radio, in her prison cell in Saudi Arabia. The news caused her to go into shock and collapse. For four weeks, her lawyers had been trying to find out the verdict, not only on Ms Parry but also on Lucille McLauchlan. Even now the verdict, the sentence, and even the charges have still not been confirmed by the Saudi judicial system.

The news that the preliminary court had recommended a sentence of eight years in prison and 500 lashes for Ms McLauchlan caused a crisis in British-Saudi relations. Robin Cook, the British Foreign Secretary, called the sentence unacceptable in the modern world.

The Saudis bristled. Their London envoy, Dr Ghazi Gosaibi, angrily responded that the kingdom was not going to change its religion, its customs or its judicial system "just to appease a few bleeding heart liberals".

The gulf of mutual misunderstanding between the world of Islam and the West could not have been greater. "Barbaric" screamed the London tabloids. Saudi officials meanwhile saw the criticisms as a direct attack on their religion.

Not all Saudis see it that way, and certainly not all Muslims. After all, Saudi Arabia and Libya are the only Muslim state one of the only two states which do not allow defence lawyers to be active in court.

Many Saudis have welcomed the glare of international publicity generated by the nurses' case to highlight the inequities of their judicial system. Here, "justice" depends on confessions secured under duress - and often torture. Concepts of habeas corpus, police investigations, forensic tests and all the other trappings of the Western adversarial system of justice are unknown.

For the Saudi police, the route to a conviction is through confession, and for them, confessions bring large cash bonuses and promotion.

Prisoners, on the other hand, are not informed of the verdict until their cases go through the judicial review process and their sentence is confirmed by the king. Often, the first time they know they have been condemned to death is when the prison guards take them out of their cell to "Chop Square", as the Saudis call the place of execution.

For a foreigner in jail in Saudi Arabia, a refusal to confess to the crime you are charged with means that no one will be informed of your whereabouts. No confession means no contact with your embassy, and certainly no lawyer.

Many prisoners find themselves on a grisly judicial roundabout of being presented to court and being asked: "Have you confessed?" "No?" "Then go back to jail, back to same police officers who have been interrogating you before."

Some, like Sarah Jane Dementara, a 20year-old Filipina maid facing beheading for murdering her employer three days after she arrived in the kingdom, last out a year in solitary before "confessing". Others, such as the two British nurses, lasted just a week before constructing their confessions with their police interrogators.

Those "confessions" were secured, say the nurses, after days of threats of sexual abuse from police officers. At one stage, Ms Mc Lauch lan says she was asked to perform oral sex on a police major and take off her knickers. Deborah Parry claims she was continually groped and called "British trash" by her interrogators. Despite such testimony, the judges of the Al Khobar Sharia court chose to accept the confessions as valid.

Such treatment in the privacy of a prison cell is a far cry from the dreams the two girls had of the kingdom before arriving. For both nurses, Saudi Arabia offered the opportunity of tax-free salaries, paid accommodation and regular tickets home, terms which each year attract thousands of Irish nurses. For many, there is the added bonus of thousands of unattached and highly paid bachelors, some on the run from divorces back home and on the look-out for female company. For those like the nurses, working on military bases gave them exemption from the harsh social codes which govern Saudi life outside the compounds. Here, pubs are allowed to operate discreetly in unidentified villas. Today, as the two women wait to hear their fate, a deal is finally beginning to take shape on their sentence. Pivotal to the case, as he has always been, is Frank Gilford, the brother of the murdered nurse.

For the last nine months, this Australian postal employee has managed to exasperate three governments and six sets of lawyers around the globe. During that time, he has issued conflicting statements about whether he will waive his rights under Sharia law and spare the nurses' lives.

Last week, the nurses' lawyer, Saudi attorney, Salah Hejailan, maintains, Mr Gilford finally agreed to accept blood money in compensation. According to Hejailan, he is demanding $1.2 million in cash for a sister he has not seen for 20 years. Of this, some $750,000 will go to his pocket, the rest to a hospital in Australia.

With his acceptance of blood money, Deborah Parry's life is saved at least. The maximum she can get is five years in jail. For Lucille, too, there is the hope that her eightyear jail sentence and the 500 lashes may be commuted in the regular amnesties granted by the king on Muslim feast days.

Their families are hoping that they could be home in two years' time, that is if the Saudis choose to swallow the deal in the interests of good foreign relations, Frank Gilford does not change his mind once again, and the powerful Muslim clergymen who run the courts accept a change of verdict. There could be a lot of "ifs" before the nightmare is finally over for the two British nurses.

See also page 12