TRIAL BY ORDEAL. One Nurse's Hell in a Saudi Jail

Softcover. Lucy McLaughlan went to Saudi Arabia to work as a nurse, yet within months of her arrival found herself accused of murder and facing public execution by beheading. Lucy and her fellow nurse Deborah Parry both signed confessions - but only after being threatened with assault and rape by the police. The Saudi legal system, where a woman's word is automatically considered inferior to a man's, then refused to listen when the nurses tried to retract their statements. for 17 long months Lucy was held in a stinking prison cell in Dhahran, not knowing what each new day would bRing, as the family of the murder victim squabbled over the amount of 'blood money' traditionally paid to save the convicted murderer from the executioner's sword. Behind bars she maintained her sanity by keeping a diary which recorded her every thought and fear as her mood swung between wild optimism and dark despair until finally a combination of international diplomacy and power politics achieved the grudging compromoise that secured Lucy's release. Here, in her own words, Lucy tells her fateful story from the moment she stepped off the plane and felt the heat of the desert kingdom on her face, to the crackling voice of the radio announcer on the World Service which told her she was finally going home. Illus. in colour, Appendices + Epilogue. 223pp. 8vo. softcover. From the library of true-crime writer, Wilfred Grgg, with his personal b/plate. F.