Colonel Hamad Al-Omari told a Sunday newspaper he had treated Deborah Parry and Lucille McLauchlan "modestly and discreetly" during his force's investigations of the death of Australian nurse Yvonne Guildford in 1996.

Confessions: Nurses say statements were beaten from them

Deborah Parry was sentenced to death and Lucille McLauchlan to eight years and 500 lashes.

But the nurses returned to the UK in May after King Fahd released them as a humanitarian gesture.

When they arrived in the UK, they sold their stories to two national newspapers for six-figure sums and then alleged their confessions had been extracted from them by force.

The Mail on Sunday's sister paper, the Daily Mail, allegedly lost in the bidding war to sign up the two nurses.

The officer's interview, given to the Mail on Sunday, will add a further twist to the affair.

Parry: Claimed sexual assaults

The nurses had alleged they had been beaten and subjected to sexual assaults during interrogations after they were arrested for Ms Guildford's murder in 1996.

Colonel Hamad told the Mail on Sunday: "I reject what they say. I never put a hand on them and I am positive not one finger was laid on them by my officers.

"They claim we tortured them or tried to rape them but we were never alone with them, never at all."

Colonel Hamad said that police always interviewed the nurses in the presence of two translators and a religious official.

The interview is a highly unusual move for a Saudi official as they are often wary of western journalists.

But it is also supported by Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, the King's brother, who in an interview with Labour MP George Galloway, dismisses the nurses' allegations as "falsehoods".

He said: "It is beyond comprehension that two people who were treated so leniently after convictions for such a grave crime should react so ungenerously.