Briton jailed in Saudi 'haunted'

Mr Lee was shown on Saudi television 'confessing'

The fiancée of one of the men released after being convicted of bombings in Saudi Arabia says he looks "haunted".

Jim Lee was one of one of six Britons and a Belgian national released from jail after being granted clemency by Saudi's King Fahd. They all insist they are innocent.

His fiancée Gillian Barton, who visited all the men in the Riyadh prison, said they were "very angry against the Saudis".

"Each one of them looks haunted," she said.

She told the BBC the men would be getting together in the next few weeks to talk about their experience and decide what to do next.

"I'm sure they won't go quietly. They'll make sure the whole world knows about this ordeal."

The men had been convicted of a series of bombings that killed one Briton, Christopher Rodway, in November 2000, and injured several other Western expatriate workers.

Two of the men - Scot Sandy Mitchell, who has family ties in Halifax, and Glasgow-born William Sampson, a long-time resident of Canada - had faced public beheading.

Solitary confinement

Mr Lee from Dinas Powys, south Wales, James Cottle from Greater Manchester, Peter Brandon from Cardiff and Les Walker from the Wirral, had been sentenced to up to 18 years each.

Saudi authorities claimed the bombings were part of an alleged feud over illicit alcohol trading among expatriates.

But the men's families and campaigners claimed the six were scapegoats for attacks on Western targets carried out by Islamic extremists.

They said confessions made by five of the men on television were forced out of them and that they had been victims of torture and solitary confinement.

Ms Barton, of Bury, Greater Manchester, was the closest relative to all the men and had taken the men books and jigsaws in jail to help them pass the time.