Booze, bombs and blood

Sunday Herald, The, Feb 11, 2001 by Home Affairs Editor Neil Mackay

IT is the stuff of thrillers. A story of illegal bootlegging, double-crosses, spies, revenge and murder amid the decadent, closeted world of British ex-pat life in the desert state of Saudi Arabia. The plot is one of bombings, speakeasies, bribery and arrest - all set against the looming spectre of the executioner's chopping block.

This web of intrigue and deceit was thrust into the world's spotlight on Monday when a soft-spoken Scot called Alexander Mitchell appeared before police television cameras in the Saudi capital of Riyadh to confess his part in a series of car bomb attacks which have killed one Briton and injured six others.

Mitchell, a 44-year-old anaesthetics technician known as Sandy to his friends and family, looked drawn and scared as he told haltingly how he planted a bomb under the car of Christopher Rodway on November 17 last year. Rodway's leg was blown off and he bled to death in front of his wife before an ambulance arrived.

William Sampson, who was born in Scotland but emmigrated to Canada, was also paraded before cameras where he too confessed to the bombing. A third man, a Belgian, called Raaf Skivens, admitted he planted a device on November 22 in which six people - including three Britons and an Irishwoman - were injured.

The Saudi authorities claimed the bombings are linked to to a falling out among Britons involved in the kingdom's illicit drinks racket. The strict Islamic country has an absolute ban on alcohol, but the country's enormous ex-pat community finds it hard to give up western tastes for liquor despite risking a public flogging and a spell in a medieval-style Saudi prison. Many Saudis also share a passion for banned alcohol.

Some 150,000 cases of spirits are smuggled into the country every year with bootlegging yielding a cool #300 million a year in profits. The ex-pat community also brews its own alcohol, and a litre and a half of sidiqui - a raw spirit like moonshine - costs pence to make but sells for about #25. Some Britons make up to #2000 a week on the black market.

According to the Saudis the westerners became greedy and fell out over a lucrative business deal, and now the three who had confessed to the bombings would have to pay for their crimes with their heads - the punishment for murder in Saudi.

But it isn't quite that clear cut. The Sunday Herald has pieced together the real series of events which led to Mitchell's extraordinary Monday night confession. At the heart of this story lies one man - a shadowy American known as Michael Sedlak, who was the first westerner arrested in connection with the bombings.

Sedlak worked for the Vinell Corporation in Saudi - a company staffed by former US military and intelligence officers employed to train the Saudi National Guard. A former CIA operative, Wilbur Crane Eveland, described how he used Vinell as a cover during tours of duty in the Middle East. Its founder, Albert Vinell, was known for his willingness to help the CIA in any way he could, and the Pentagon once described it as "our own little mercenary army". It has long been seen as a front for "covert policy-making" by the USA.

The 1995 bomb which killed five Americans in Saudi was planted at the headquarters of the Saudi National Guard and the building which housed the US military training mission. Along with his role in Vinell, Sedlak was one of the best known faces in Riyadh's underground drinking dens. He was a regular at the secret bar run by Mitchell. Given Mitchell's Kirkintilloch roots it was no surprise he christened his lucrative shebeen "Celtic Corner".

Ex-pats, who know Sedlak and both those injured in the bombs and the other bombing co-accused, say the story began to unfold in the late summer and early autumn of 2000 when Sedlak lived on Five Villa Compound in the suburbs of Riyadh.

Sedlak was the "interface" between the dozen or so residents living on the compound and the Saudi landlord. He collected the rent, raised any problems with the landlord and kept an eye out for "greenhorns" - recently arrived ex-pats who needed to acclimatise to life under a fundamentalist regime.

Sometime prior to the bombings, Mike Sedlak, known to be a heavy drinker, was handed a sizeable roll of rent money from each of the residents but instead of handing it over, he allegedly kept it for himself.

The people he ripped off were mostly British, so the story goes, and, outraged at this double-cross, they informed on him to his company which later terminated his contract. One former resident of Five Villa Compound said: "Mike flipped. He was drunk. He was angry and he wanted revenge."

Saudi police say Rodway and Sedlak knew each other, but the connection between them was more than that, according to sources who knew Sedlak - Rodway was also one of the Britons ripped off by Sedlak over the rent deal at Five Villa Compound.

At least one among the three Britons and the Irishwoman injured by the second car bomb on November 22 were also linked to Five Villa Compound, it is claimed. Initially, the attacks were thought to be connected to anti-western terrorism and Scotland Yard's elite anti- terrorist unit SO13 was even flown to Saudi to establish whether any group was targeting Britons. But the trail led to the door of Sedlak, or so the Saudis said.