There is no point playing footsie with undemocratic regimes

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Widow 'kept in the dark' over Saudi murder case

With any luck, the sentences of long imprisonment and, in one case, death, apparently passed on five Britons accused of planting bombs in Saudi Arabia have not yet been confirmed. That at any rate seems to be the hope of the Foreign Office, which is refusing all comment on the shameful situation in a last-minute attempt to get the accused dealt with more humanely.

One can only hope that it does work out. But even if it does, it is hard to believe that Saudi actions have been anything other than disgracefully unjust and British intervention anything but hopelessly tame.

Once again British expatriates have been caught up in a nightmare of incarceration and suspected torture to extract confessions (since retracted), and then condemned in secret hearings without proper access to legal help or anything that might remotely resemble a fair trial.

Had this have happened in Iraq, the Foreign Office would have expressed public outrage, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary would have made statements to an angry house, and the air would have been full of talk of retaliation and punishment. But this is in Saudi Arabia, which has a great deal of oil, which is officially an ally of Britain and whose favours and military contracts we seek with obsequious enthusiasm and substantial corruption at the highest levels.

Not that the Government hasn't tried. The Prime Minister himself sent a special envoy to Riyadh. Representations were made at all levels – but ever so quietly. "Doesn't do to rock the boat, old boy, best do these so no one loses face," as the Foreign Office would have it.

Maybe. But more likely the lesson of this – and a whole string of such cases in the Gulf – is that playing footsie with undemocratic regimes does not work, whatever the offences. Any Briton has a right to a fair trial abroad, whatever the offences, and the full support of his or her government in getting it. In the case of these five Britons, they have clearly received neither.