Posted on 04/29/2003 4:53:59 AM PDT by anniegetyourgun
George Galloway, reeling from the "shock and awe" of the week's media firestorm, says that his reputation has been "carpet-bombed". Debbie Parry, the British nurse sentenced by the Saudis to be beheaded for a murder she did not commit, knows what he means. She was carpet-bombed relentlessly by Galloway in 1998 after returning from her 17-month ordeal in a Saudi jail. Galloway called her "gruesome", the female "equivalent of Dr Crippen".
Her offence was to have been convicted of murder by a Sharia court in Saudia Arabia: a court which dispensed with such legal niceties as disclosure of prosecution evidence, trial by jury, cross examination, and the presumption of innocence. Galloway, however, had "not the slightest scintilla of doubt that she was properly convicted". The Saudis told him that Parry confessed to the murder of her fellow nurse, Yvonne Gilford, 55, at the King Fahd Medical Military Complex in Dharhan, after five days of "interrogation". Gilford had been stabbed 18 times.
According to the US State Department, the United Nations and Amnesty International, coerced confessions in Saudi Arabia are endemic. But Parry's "confession" to Saudi policemen was enough for Galloway. After a trip to Saudi Arabia financed by the Mail on Sunday, he claimed to have established her guilt "beyond peradventure".
Parry, now 44, was convicted with another British nurse, Lucille McLauchlan, now 37. McLauchlan has a conviction for stealing a dying patient's credit card and she stole Gilford's credit card, too. She was alone with Gilford the night she was murdered and has never satisfactorily explained her movements. Galloway, however, was sure both Parry and McLauchlan were guilty - because, he said, "I know about as much about this case as anyone in the world".
He did not. He did not have access - as I had - to the statements of both accused and witnesses taken by their lawyers, nor to their diaries, letters, bank statements and telephone records. Nor had he employed pathologists and other experts - as the BBC had done. It all revealed a mass of inconsistencies in McLauchlan's alibi and none in Parry's. Confronted with Gilford's credit card, McLauchlan had invented a story about Parry being jilted by Gilford, her "lesbian lover". Parry was supposed to have turned on Gilford with a kitchen knife. The ploy certainly worked for McLauchlan. She got eight years and 600 lashes: Parry got the death sentence.
Debbie Parry could prove she was not a lesbian and indeed had not even been in Gilford's room on the night of the murder. Galloway, however, claimed that she was driven by "hysterical maniacal frenzy". When Tony Blair eventually secured freedom for both women, Galloway then sought to destroy Parry's livelihood. Holy Cross hospital in Haslemere, Surrey gave Debbie Parry back her old job - its matron described her as "capable and caring". Galloway asked the Health Secretary to "forbid this grisly appointment" by striking Parry from the nursing register.
Galloway told journalists he had met two senior officials from the UK Central Council (UKCC), the nursing disciplinary body, who "were in no doubt that Parry was guilty. It was 'please help us strike this woman off. We want to strike her off.' " That was not true. When Galloway's version of what happened was relayed to one of the officials present, she said: "Thank God I took a witness to hear that conversation." The UKCC later said it had spent "months" seeking evidence that Parry was unfit to practice, but concluded that "none can be found".
It is difficult to understand why Galloway pursued poor Debbie Parry in so vicious a way. It surely can't have had anything to do with the fact that the Saudi Crown Prince he interviewed on his "fact-finding mission" later contributed £100,000 to his Mariam Appeal - can it?
I do appreciate your comments- I often wonder if compiling this stuff does much good... I figure that putting it all in one place makes for more of an impact.
Galloway's spinning and lies are much easier to see through when you see all of the information together... a decade ago, he probably would have had a fair chance of brazening his way out of this, but the speed of the 'net and talk radio has negated that. Thank God! I had my fill of that during the Clinton's corrupt tenure.
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