William Sampson (author)

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William Sampson is a dual British and Canadian national who was arrested on December 17, 2000 in Saudi Arabia. He was one of 8 people of British, Belgian and Canadian nationalities arrested on suspicion of being involved in planting and detonating a car bomb planted on a Blazer SUV in Riyadh that killed British engineer Christopher Rodway and injured his wife. A second bomb placed in another Blazer SUV, four days later injured Britons Mark Paine and Steve Coughlan. The Saudi authorities claimed that the bombings were part of a turf war within a Western liquor trafficking ring, an activity which is illegal there, though the men were further forced to confess to being spies for the British government.

Sampson alleges he was tortured, beaten, and kept without sleep for weeks and sodomized while imprisoned in the infamous Al-Hayer Prison. During imprisonment, Sampson confessed to the crime on Saudi state television and was sentenced to the death penalty.

After a 31-month period, incarcerated and under a death sentence, Sampson was granted clemency. He and his fellow compatriots were released August 8, 2003 and flown to Britain. Charles, Prince of Wales, Rubin Carter, Justin Rodway, and Canadian MP's Stéphane Bergeron and Dan McTeague were part of the diplomatic effort to obtain the release. In July 2004, it was revealed that the final release was part of a prisoner exchange for the release of 5 Saudis from the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Officials of both the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK) and the State Department (USA) have anonymously confirmed this information. A memorandum between officials of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs referring to the prisoner exchange adds further evidence of its occurrence. The Belgian government has confirmed both the authenticity of the memo and its knowledge of the exchange, but has denied any direct involvement in the negotiations. The Canadian government refuses to comment on the matter, and the involvement of Canadian MP Dan McTeague, who was promoted to junior ministerial rank for his role in the affair, seems to have been to provide, through the obtaining of Justin Rodway's letter of forgiveness, a convenient cover for the hostage exchange.

On October 28, 2004, Sampson, along with Britons Sandy Mitchell and Les Walker, won a legal battle in London, UK that allows them to sue the men in Saudi Arabia they say tortured them into making the false confessions. In February 2005, a coroner's inquest into the death of Christopher Rodway, held in Trowbridge, concluded that there was no evidence to indicate that Sampson and Mitchell had any involvement in the death, and thus were not involved in the incident for which the Saudi Arabian government had arrested them. In June of 2006, a decision handed down at the Law Lords overturned the earlier ruling of the Court of Appeal. Sampson, along with Mitchell and Walker are now appealing to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that the law in Britain, as interpreted in the Lords decision, is a violation of their rights under Article 6 (right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Sampson authored a book in 2005 about his ordeal entitled "Confessions of an Innocent Man: Torture and Survival in a Saudi Prison."[1]

In June 2006 the group's appeal was overturned by the Law Lords on the grounds that Saudi officials are protected in Britain by the State Immunity Act 1978.

Sampson graduated from The University of Edinburgh Faculty of Medicine with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1987 and The University of Edinburgh Management School with an MBA in 1990.