Sandy Mitchell, was stuck in Saudi jail for two and a half years for a crime he didn't commit
Imagine you’re enjoying the sunshine in a foreign country, when out of the blue, you’re hustled into a car and on the way to a place in a dark and dirty jail cell and accused of a crime you didn’t commit. Then follows an inhumane time of torture, interrogation and beatings. That’s what Scottish anesthetic technican Sandy Mitchell endured in two and a half years in jail in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover Up In the House of Saud gives a detailed insight into what Mitchell and other Westerners suffered at the hands of sadistic Saudi intelligence officers, keen to show no mercy to the people they had locked up. But it’s not all grim, the book gives an interesting historical story on the origins of Saudi Arabia and it’s huge Royal family.
The middle part of the book is like a movie that has too many sub-plots and the main storyline has left the audience absolutely confused. It goes into detail to describe the make up of the House of Saud and the companies, contracts that the various Prince’s hold control of.
At the same time it’s hugely intriguing the vast amounts of money that the Royal family deals in, some Prince’s have a vast property catalogue that has luxurious houses in Los Angeles and other exotic places in the world. But also big yachts, and millions of dollars of deals taking place. The life of a Saudi prince must so hard with all that money and lavish lifestyle on hand to cater to there every move, isn’t it?
With huge incomings of money can see corruption take place and the book has comments on Prince’s receiving millions of dollars worth of bribes, for their own little piggy bank. While the majority of the Saudi public, most of the mainly young, suffering from unemployment and a lack of job opportunities.
The overriding feeling on the book is the shocking, harrowing and brutally descriptive torture of Mitchell and other Westerners, all of them who were innocent people, charged with crimes they couldn’t have thought of even committing. It was done by the Saudi regime to brush under the carpet the notion of Islamic terrorism in their country and bury themselves into a deep state of denial.
Margeret Dunn, the sister of Mitchell, is left with feelings of anguish and despair as she tries to get her brother released from Saudi Arabia. Here, she comes up against a big, bricked wall in the form of the Foreign Office, who show a serious lack of urgency to help Sandy and are more concerned about upsetting their friends in Saudi.
Saudi Babylon is an informative book as it looks at the history of Saudi Arabia which is keen for it’s deserts and lands filled with oil, but it delves deeper into the darker, dangerous side of the regime that allows torture to innocent people.
Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover Up in the House of Saud, Mainstream Publishing, 239 pages, £15.99
