Sadistic gay Saudi prince abused then murdered his servant

Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al-Saud subjected Bandar Abdulaziz to a final "brutal" assault at their five-star hotel suite after they had shared a night out in London on Valentine's Day.

The prince, who lived a luxury playboy lifestyle funded by his wealthy family, was fuelled by champagne and "sex on the beach" cocktails when he bit his 32-year-old victim hard on both cheeks during the attack.

Jurors heard that by the early hours of 15 February, Mr Abdulaziz was left so worn down and injured - having suffered facial injuries in previous assaults - that he simply let Saud kill him without a fight.

Saud then spent hours on the phone to a mysterious contact in Saudi Arabia trying to work out how to cover up what he had done.

He calmly ordered two glasses of milk and bottled water from room service as he set about dragging the body into the bed and trying to clean up the blood.It was only about 12 hours later, after chauffeur Abadi Abadella had received a call from Saudi Arabia telling him to go to the hotel, that the body was discovered in room 312.

The prince claimed he had woken in the afternoon to find he could not revive his friend - by now stiff with rigor mortis - and tried to explain his injuries by saying he had been attacked and robbed of €3,000 a few weeks before.

However, the jury was shown CCTV footage from a lift in the hotel, which showed Saud launch another vicious assault on Mr Abdulaziz prior to the murder.

Jonathan Laidlaw, prosecuting, told the jury: "Beneath the surface, this was a deeply abusive relationship which the defendant exploited, as the assaults in the lift so graphically demonstrate, for sadistic reasons, for his own personal gratification.

"The abuse extended beyond physical abuse. There was plainly an emotional element and psychological element to it.

"He (Mr Abdulaziz] was killed without apparently ever having fought back, because the defendant was completely unharmed, without any mark at all, when he was examined at the police station.Bandar appears to have let the defendant kill him."

The 34-year-old member of one of the world's richest and most powerful dynasties was found guilty of murder by the jury at the Old Bailey, after just one hour and 35 minutes of deliberation yesterday.

After the case, it emerged he has suffered severe mental and physical shock while locked up in high-security Belmarsh Prison, and had been unable to eat, sleep or instruct his legal team.

The prince, who secretly entertained gay escorts in his plush 259-a-night hotel room, could face execution if he ever returns to his own country, where homosexuality is a capital offence.