Health fear for jailed nurses

The Foreign Office said last night that it was "concerned" about conditions at a Saudi Arabian prison where two British nurses are being held while facing a murder trial.

Deborah Parry, 38, of Alton, Hampshire, and Lucille McLauchlan, 31, of Dundee, have been detained in Dammam central prison since being arrested last December and charged with murdering Australian nurse Yvonne Gilford, 55, at the King Fahd military medical complex in Dhahran, where all three worked. Both women are said to be suffering constant sickness and diarrhoea and struggling to cope with the intense heat in their communal cell.

A Foreign Office spokesman said last night: "We have made a request to the Saudi authorities on the subject of the conditions in the prison, but they are yet to respond. This is something that is obviously uppermost in our mind, and obviously we will continue to seek an improvement in their conditions."

The women's adjourned trial resumes tomorrow when the judges are expected to give an indication of how the action will proceed.