Sources close to the case confirmed yesterday that the brother of the murder victim, Yvonne Gilford, had not used a three-week adjournment to intercede on their behalf. Meanwhile Deborah Parry and Lucille McLauchlan are preparing once again to proclaim to the three judges, all devout Muslims and scholars in Islamic law, their innocence of a crime to which they confessed just before Christmas in a statement which they now say was extracted under brutal police pressure just after their arrest. Even for a high profile case involving British citizens abroad, the trial has attracted an exceptionally high level of diplomatic activity. Yesterday Baroness Symons, the Foreign Office minister responsible for consular affairs, met both the defendants' families, who remain utterly convinced of the two women's innocence. So, increasingly, are a number of close observers of the case. Australian government officials have been discreetly in touch with Frank Gilford, the victim's brother. The case is being closely monitored by senior British officials and Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary has been given regular reports. William Patey, the British consul general, will attend the hearing, along with the Saudi legal adviser, normally retained by the embassy, Salah Al-Hejailan, who is representing the defendants.
But British officials say that the Saudi authorities have been scrupulous in ensuring consular access to the defendants and accepting the role - historically unusual in such criminal cases - of lawyers in the court. And the Saudi ambassador in London, who yesterday spoke exclusively to The Independent about the trial, is also keeping in close touch with developments.None of this is surprising, when you consider how high the stakes are. In the most extreme scenario, the two women face the possibility of public beheading, an outcome which would provoke an outcry here of the sort which could well threaten diplomatic, strategic and above all commercial relations with Saudi Arabia. UK visible exports, 25 per cent of them in arms, totalled pounds 2.5bn last year Imports, mainly of oil, totalled around pounds 752m. It is a safe bet that neither country would want that relationship disrupted; but it is an equally safe bet first that the British government would come under public pressure to apply diplomatic sanctions against Saudi Arabia, and second that inflammatory things would be said and written here which might well prompt the Saudis to do the same in reverse.When in 1980 the BBC broadcast its film Death of a Princess, showing the execution of a Saudi princess for adultery, there was a full-scale diplomatic row which went on for four months, and a trade battle which went on for even longer. British public opinion is impervious to the regular beheadings in Saudi Arabia of Pakistanis, Nigerians or Bangladeshis, often for drug smuggling offences; but it would almost certainly react very differently to the execution of two British women protesting their innocence.Yvonne Gilford's body was found on 11 December on the floor of her flat in the King Fahd Military Medical complex in Dahran where she worked as a nurse She had been stabbed, bludgeoned and suffocated.
The prosecution claims - and this is vigorously denied by both the defendants - that she had been involved in a lesbian relationship with at least one of them, that during a late-night argument one of the nurses hit her with a teapot, and that she drew her knife to protect herself. In the ensuing scuffle, it is alleged, the knife was snatched from her and she was stabbed, suffering multiple wounds in her head, chest and arms. As she screamed out, she was then allegedly suffocated with a pillow. And finally, it is alleged that one of the two women was spotted using the victim's cash machine card in a local dispenser.Most of that version surfaced in the now disavowed confessions. The nurses now say that they signed the confessions only after being stripped naked and fondled, and that policemen had trod on their feet. In that cramped cellar, everything seemed for the best.The satire was sometimes gentle, sometimes sharp. The words came from some of Poland's best-known poets, the music came from some of the most popular composers Nothing in metropolitan Warsaw could quite match it.
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