Frank Gilford said he found a public appeal by Scottish nurse Lucille McLauchlan to meet him and discuss the case "deeply distressing".

McLauchlan: 'The case is not right'

"I don't have anything to help her and I think she knows that," he said.

McLauchlan, who proclaims her innocence, had told an Australian newspaper and TV channel that she wanted to apologise to Mr Gilford for any past animosity.

In an interview at her home in Dundee, McLauchlan said she was writing to Mr Gilford, the man she once called "a greedy, selfish bastard" for accepting $1.1m (£750,000) in "blood money".

Yvonne Gilford: Deeply mourned

The deal led to her release along with that of nurse Deborah Parry, who was also jailed for Yvonne Gilford's murder.

MacLauchlan, now Lucille Ferrie after marrying her fiance while she was in a Saudi jail, had told journalists: "I always thought that if he actually saw the case against me, he would realise that it was not right."

But Mr Gilford said he would not see her "under any circumstances".

He said his family wished to be left alone to grieve.

"They were convicted for the crime, I am not prepared to shy away from that fact. I wish she would just let us get on with our lives. The whole family has had a terrible time and this just makes it all worse," he said.

He also said that her plea was a publicity stunt to promote her book.

"I saw a picture of her on the front of a newspaper with her book in her lap and that said it all really," he said from his home in Jamestown in Australia.

Brutal murder

Ms Gilford was stabbed 13 times, bludgeoned and suffocated in 1996 in the same Dhahran hospital in which the British nurses worked.

McLauchlan was sentenced to eight years in jail with 500 lashes as an accessory to the murder while Ms Parry was sent to death row.