Relations between Britain and Saudi Arabia lurched towards a crisis yesterday after one of two British nurses charged with murder was sentenced to eight years in jail and 500 lashes. The punishment was "wholly unacceptable in the modern world," said Mr Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary.
Meanwhile confusion surrounded the fate of the other British nurse found guilty of murdering an Australian colleague with the victim's brother early today failing to confirm he had waived the death penalty.
Reports from Saudi Arabia, quoting the lawyer of the condemned British nurse Deborah Parry (41), said the brother of the murdered Australian nurse, Yvonne Gilford (55), had signed a document waiving his right to the death penalty under Saudi law.
"What agreement, who said that, who brought that out," Mr Frank Gilford asked when told by reporters of the agreement as he left for work from his home in Jamestown, 125 miles north of Adelaide in South Australia state. He said he would speak to the media later today.
Earlier Saudi Arabia's London envoy, Mr Ghazi Gosaibi, rejected any criticism of the Saudi judicial system that might follow. "We are not going to change our system, our religion and our customs to appease bleeding heart liberals," he said.
Lucille McLauchlan (31) was yesterday sentenced to flogging and jail after a Saudi court found her to be an accessory to the murder of Gilford, found dead with 21 stab wounds last December.
The verdict and sentence against Deborah Parry was unclear. Early reports said she had been sentenced to beheading, but her Saudi lawyer later said her case was not heard yesterday. The two British nurses have been living in fear of a public beheading for the past nine months.
Mr Salah Hejailan, defending the nurses, termed McLauchlan's sentence "excessive" and said he planned to appeal in the higher courts.
Flogging, a common sentence in Saudia Arabia, is usually carried out by police officers using whips or branches of palm trees in the confines of a prison cell. When a sentence involving several hundred lashes is handed down by the courts, the lashings take place in batches, often 25 at weekly intervals. Prisoners are allowed to wear their clothes on their backs during the whipping.
Ms Ann McLauchlan, mother of Lucille, said her daughter was determined to overturn the court's verdict. "We and Lucille will prove to the Saudis that she is innocent," she said. "A settlement has been signed with [Frank] Gilford to waive the death penalty," Mr Hejailan said earlier by telephone from the United States. "It is signed and done and witnessed and authenticated."
Mr Hejailan said: "[The agreement] was signed by Gilford himself and the two nurses. . .We cannot disclose the terms of the settlement agreement, but they are agreeable to us. We will disclose them in the coming few days."
The International Law Firm (ILF), representing the Gilford family, said Parry was found guilty of "intentional murder punishable by death" and Lucille McLauchlan was jailed for "related offences".
Mr Cook said he would meet the Saudi foreign minister in an attempt to spare McLauchlan from receiving 500 lashes.
McLauchlan, from Dundee, Scotland, and Parry, from Alton, Hampshire, denied killing Gilford and said they only signed confessions under threat of sexual abuse and after promises of being allowed to leave Saudi Arabia. In the confessions, which they retracted in court, Parry admitted to the fatal stabbings, while McLauchlan said she used a pillow to smother Gilford's cries, according to legal sources.