Canadian says he was freed under Saudi-U.S. deal

Is this a repeat of Reagan's Iran-Contra trading hostages for hostages instead of guns? ---BBB

Jul. 4, 2004. 08:10 PM
Sampson says he was freed under Saudi-U.S. deal

OTTAWA - The tale of William Sampson, a Canadian jailed fort 31 months and accused of terrorism and murder in Saudi Arabia, has taken another bizarre twist with a claim that he finally won his freedom last year in a prisoner exchange brokered by the United States.

In return for the release of Sampson and other westerners held in Riyadh, the Americans agreed to send five Saudi terror suspects they had captured back to their homeland, the New York Times reported Sunday.

The Canadian government had no immediate comment, other than to say it was looking into the matter.

Sampson, in a telephone interview from Penrith, Britain, where he now makes his home, said he's convinced the story is correct.

"It confirms information that I have found from different sources myself over the last nine months," he said.

Sampson said he knows of at least two other attempted deals that fell through when Britain and Belgium - the other countries involved in the affair - rejected various demands made by Saudi negotiators.

The Saudis were trying at that time to extract a promise from the British that they would expel Saudi political dissidents who had made London their base of operations, said Sampson.

Sampson said he has also seen Belgian government documents that indicate the Saudis changed their approach for the third and ultimately successful deal. They sought American agreement to release the five Saudi prisoners who had been held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"It's my information that the Saudis themselves broached the idea of an exchange," said Sampson.

"We were used from the very, very outset as hostages, and this had been deliberate from the start, to use us as a means of leverage against western governments."

The Times, quoting anonymous U.S. and British officials, said the prisoner exchange that finally freed Sampson was engineered by Robert Jordan, the American ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

The deal was controversial in Washington, where some officials thought the U.S. was taking too big a risk by releasing potentially dangerous terrorist suspects from Guantanamo, said the newspaper.

But the Americans reportedly went ahead because they wanted to help British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a loyal ally in the war then shaping up in Iraq.

Blair's government had been trying to win the release of six Britons held along with Sampson, who is a dual Canadian-British citizen. Also held was Belgian Raf Schveyns.

All were arrested following a series of bombings in Riyadh that westerners claimed were the work of Al Qaeda terrorists and the Saudis claimed were part of a turf war among western bootleggers involved in the illicit alcohol trade.

All eight westerners were finally set free in August 2003, three months after the five Guantanamo prisoners were sent home to Saudi Arabia.

Sampson said the Belgian documents, obtained and shown to him by Schveyns following their release, indicate that diplomats in Riyadh were worried about the three-month time lag.

The Belgian embassy sent word home to Brussels, saying it appeared the Saudis might be reneging on the deal and asking whether they should take the matter up directly with the U.S. ambassador.

It is not clear what the Belgian government advised its diplomats to do.

Jenni Chen, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa, would not comment in detail on the affair. She said only that officials were aware of the New York Times report and were trying to gather more information.

Dan McTeague, a Liberal MP who visited Sampson in prison in Saudi Arabia and encouraged the federal government to press for his release, said this is the first he's heard of a U.S.-brokered deal or a prisoner exchange involving Guantanamo.

"I think it's intriguing, and for some perhaps quite plausible," said McTeague. "But I'm at a loss to really say what triggered the release."

Sampson, who was arrested in late 2000 and spent 31 months in custody, was convicted by a Saudi court of murder and terrorism and was sentenced to death.

He has always denied any wrongdoing and says he was tortured into making false confessions - not just to the bombings, but also to being a British spy.

The other western prisoners have told similar stories since their release. Sampson and several of the others are currently suing the Saudi government in the British courts.