'If he confessed to these crimes it would have been under duress'

Published on Saturday 9 August 2003 01:00

ONE of Sandy Mitchell’s closest friends last night told how he is convinced that allegations that he was involved in a bootleg drinks ring in Riyadh are totally untrue.

David Fyfe, who refers to his friend of 33 years as Alec, worked alongside Mr Mitchell for nine months when they were police constables in Glasgow.

But he said that like most westerners, Mr Mitchell had no intention of abstaining from alcohol when he moved to Saudi Arabia.

On Friday night he and friends would gather in their home in an expatriate compound and enjoy a beer or two. After years of working in the strict Islamic state he had learned to bend the rules while ensuring the police turned a blind eye.

But according to Mr Fyfe, whose relationship to Mr Mitchell is so close that the two introduce themselves to strangers as brothers, that was the extent of Mr Mitchell’s drinking crimes.

"It’s just not the person Alec is," Mr Fyfe told The Scotsman from his home in Kirkintilloch yesterday. "He had a good salary, a lifestyle he loved, a wife and a child.

"He enjoyed a bit of home brew behind closed doors, and all the westerners know the Saudi authorities don’t mind that. But that was as far as it went. To suggest that he would get mixed up in a bootleg ring and all the risks that involves is ludicrous beyond belief."

Mr Fyfe said: "He absolutely loved life in Saudi. He was on about 25 grand a year or more, tax free and he said that his money just used to go straight into the bank and sit there because the cost of living for him was so cheap. He got loads of fantastic holidays because he could see the rest of the world so cheaply from were he was."

In the 1990s Mr Mitchell married his Thai wife, Noi, whom he met on holiday in Thailand. They settled in Riyadh, living in a home attached to Mr Mitchell’s job at a Riyadh hospital. They have a son, Matthew, aged 4. Mr Fyfe and his wife Lesley, 45, joined the couple for holidays in Thailand and other parts of the world, although they never visited Saudi Arabia.

Mr Fyfe spoke of his shock when he switched on the television in December 2000 and discovered that Mr Mitchell had been arrested and charged in connection with a fatal car bombing. He said the video images of his 6ft tall, 15 stone friend were a shadow of the man he knew.

He said: "Looking at those TV pictures of Alec and remembering the friend I’d known all these years was like thinking of two different people. We had seen him just a few months earlier and he was a big fit lad. Now here he was gaunt and haggard and thin.

"It was obvious to me that he was under the influence of drugs or some other substance. Alec was always a relaxed guy but this guy was slurring his words, he was fazed out of it completely. He looked as if he had been tortured. If he ever confessed to these crimes it would only have been under duress, and I’m sure the Saudis were more than capable of putting the pressure on."

Mr Fyfe told of his fears when Mr Mitchell was sentenced to death last year. "That was a terrible moment for us. Being a westerner in Saudi did not preclude you from being executed. It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened before and it was a very real possibility that Alec would be executed. For nearly three years now we’ve been worried about this, waiting for clemency or something else, and finally our hopes have been answered. We just want to get Alec home, sit down and let him talk about what he has been through."