LONDON // The case of Karl Andree, a 74-year-old Briton facing 360 lashes in Jeddah for possessing alcohol, has highlighted both the enormous value of trade relations between the West and Saudi Arabia and the controversies it often arouses.
Britain on Tuesday abruptly pulled out of bidding for a contract worth £5.9 million (Dh33.5m) to train Saudi prison service staff. And the government is also under political pressure to abandon attempts to secure a separate deal to train Saudi police in the UK.
Tuesday’s announcement, if related to the row over Andree’s threatened flogging, would be unprecedented in the history of close UK-Saudi ties dating from the First World War.
Despite assurances from Downing Street that the decision to pull out of the prison service contract was unrelated to the Andree case, the issue has caused a serious rift among ministers.
The prime minister's office told The National on Wednesday that David Cameron had now written to the Saudi government to reinforce attempts being made "at the highest level" to obtain Andree's release. Although sentenced to one year in prison – as well as to 360 lashes – after homemade wine was found in his car, Andree has now been held for 14 months.
Most political observers in the UK seem convinced that the justice secretary Michael Gove – a robust critic of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record – has triumphed over foreign ministry colleagues in convincing Mr Cameron to drop interest in the prison service contract in response to the severe punishment faced by an elderly Briton.
This has left those in the foreign ministry furious at the risk of causing offence to a key British ally in the Middle East, observers say.
Foreign secretary Philip Hammond was reported by British media as having opposed the decision, arguing that it made the UK look "untrustworthy" in the eyes of a friendly country. The Daily Mail newspaper quoted an unnamed ministry source as warning that the decision could prove "diplomatically nuclear".
Britain’s lucrative commercial links with Gulf Arab states stretch back for decades. Saudi Arabia is its biggest trading partner in the region, with British exports to the country far outstripping Saudi imports to the UK.
Britain’s “visible goods” exports to Saudi Arabia were worth £3.26 billion in 2012, while its services exports were worth £2bn in 2010. Arms sales alone accounted for £4bn of British exports between 2010 and 2015.
Meanwhile, over 200 British-Saudi joint venture companies are worth more than £11bn, and £62bn of Saudi money is invested in Britain.
But the history of British-Saudi ties is not without its turbulence. As far back as 1980, a British documentary named Death of a Princess – which its makers presented as depicting the public execution of a member of the Saudi royal family and her lover – caused huge diplomatic fallout between the two countries. The British ambassador was ordered to leave Saudi Arabia and sanctions were imposed, though relations soon thawed and the ambassador returned to his post after four months.
The saga left a legacy of Saudi suspicion towards Britain, which Margaret Thatcher, the then prime minister, found herself having to counter during negotiations leading to the first phase of Al Yamamah arms deal, which began in 1985 with sales of Tornado and Hawk aircraft to Riyadh.
Mrs Thatcher also devoted strenuous efforts to countering hostile press coverage in the UK to avoid losing what would prove to be a record series of arms deals for British manufacturers.
Today, throughout the West, the clamour for a share of Saudi business generally wins out over any misgivings about Riyadh’s penal policy, even when severe punishments including flogging are imposed on western expatriates.
This is true of France, where there has been widespread political and media condemnation of the death sentence handed down to pro-democracy activist Mohammed Al Nimr – for alleged crimes committed when he was 17 – and the 1,000 lashes ordered for blogger Raif Badawi.
But the French socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, had no qualms about signing up to a series of deals worth €10 billion (Dh42bn) during a visit to Riyadh on Tuesday. One agreement was for 30 patrol boats, while another will establish a Saudi fund for investment in French businesses.
Noone at the Saudi embassy in London was available to respond to The National's request for a comment on the case of Andree. But the BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner, says he has been assured by Saudi and British officials that "there was never any question" of the flogging sentence on the 74-year-old being carried out and that his release had merely been held up by delays in Saudi bureaucracy.
Andree’s son, Simon, says his father – who has survived three cancers and suffers from asthma – has shown “moral courage” in accepting he had done wrong and has now served even longer than the prison term imposed.
But, he told CNN: “I fear he would not survive these lashes. If he were a younger man, you would think ‘tough luck, dad, put up with it, you shouldn’t have done it’. But he’s an old man and a punishment meant to be corporal punishment could end up being capital punishment.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
