Panel to Hear Charges of Saudi Torture

The way Scott Nelson sees it, it was bad enough for Saudi Arabian police to beat him on the soles of his feet and break his knees while trying to get him to confess to charges they never even explained. But for the U.S. government to side with the torturers in court, that was too much.

“When you come back to this country and your own government turns its back on you, the torture continues,” said Nelson, a technician from Raleigh, N.C.

Nelson is trying to sue the Saudi government for damages. The State Department maintains that U.S. courts are closed to him because Saudi Arabia enjoys “sovereign immunity” from lawsuits resulting from government actions carried out in the kingdom.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last November that Nelson has a right to sue, but the Saudi government, supported by the U.S. government, has appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court has not yet decided if it will hear the case.

Nelson and others who claim to have been tortured in Saudi jails plan to tell their stories today to the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on international law. The subcommittee is considering legislation authorizing American citizens to bring suit in U.S. courts seeking money damages for mistreatment by foreign governments.

In interviews with The Times on Tuesday, Nelson, Jim Smrkovski of Lemars, Iowa, and British citizen Keith Carmichael told stories of torture in Saudi custody.

Carmichael, as a British subject, would not benefit directly from the proposed law, but he said that if the United States acts, other countries may follow.

Nelson said he worked in Saudi Arabia in 1983 and 1984 as a systems engineer at the showcase King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh. He said he discovered poor maintenance that resulted in a fire hazard. When hospital authorities did nothing about the situation, he said he went to the government.

“I was arrested and spent the next five or six days being beaten,” he said. “They broke my knees and damaged my back.”

Smrkovski said he had been employed by Saudia Airlines for almost a decade when he was arrested in 1985. He said he was tortured by police who were trying to locate a friend suspected of gun running and drug dealing.

After 15 months in prison, 10 of them in solitary confinement, Smrkovski said he was judged guilty of conspiracy to smuggle 26 cases of liquor, which is banned in the kingdom. He said he was sentenced to two years in prison but was almost immediately released and allowed to leave the country.

Carmichael said he directed a construction company in Saudi Arabia from 1976 until 1981, when he got into a business dispute with a member of the royal family. For more than two years, he said, he was alternately tortured and hospitalized.

In the end, he was abruptly released, apparently at the order of King Fahd, and was sent home.