A Saudi prince has been jailed for life for murdering his manservant, who was found beaten to death in bed at a plush London hotel. The defendant spent most of the trial trying to prove he was not gay. Before his trial began at the Old Bailey, Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Nasir al Saud made strenuous efforts to keep the question of his homosexuality secret. The year-old prince admitted he had assaulted his manservant, Bandar Abdulaziz, but denied murder.
His barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, argued the question of sexuality was irrelevant to the case and pointed out homosexual acts were a "mortal sin" under Islamic sharia law. Mr Kelsey-Fry said if the prince was outed as a homosexual he could face execution in his native Saudi Arabia.
Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, argued that if he was convicted and recommended for deportation after serving his sentence he would be able to claim asylum in Britain by arguing that his life was in danger, whether or not he actually was gay. He said it was not for a defendant "to edit the prosecution evidence".
Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi Arabia expert with Human Rights Watch, said homosexuals had in the past been executed but it was usually for rape and he said a prince would be immune from court action. When the trial began, Mr Kelsey-Fry went to great lengths to stress his client denied he was gay. A hotel porter, Dobromir Dimitrov, himself homosexual, said: "I would describe them as a gay couple.
But Mr Kelsey-Fry, cross examining Mr Dimitrov, told him: "It is not accepted that this was in fact a gay couple - but I readily accept that you had the impression they were a gay couple. Two male escorts, Pablo Silva and Louis Szikora, also gave evidence they had performed sex acts on the prince.
The court had heard that the murder of Abdulaziz was the final act in a "deeply abusive" master-servant relationship in which the prince carried out frequent attacks on his aide "for his own personal gratification". Jurors were told that by the early hours of 15 February, Abdulaziz was so worn down and injured — having suffered a "cauliflower" ear and swollen eye from previous assaults — that he let Saud kill him without a fight.
The prince then spent hours on the phone to a mysterious contact in Saudi Arabia trying to decide how to cover up what he had done. He ordered two glasses of milk and bottled water on room service as he set about dragging the body into the bed and trying to clean up the blood. Detectives took him to the area to try to retrace the route, but as they did so, other officers who were reviewing CCTV at the hotel found footage of Saud mercilessly attacking his aide in a lift on 22 January.
When he was then taken to Paddington Green police station and arrested, Saudi officials tried to claim he had diplomatic immunity, but this was scotched by a check of Foreign Office records. Saud tried to cover up the true nature of his relationship with his servant, claiming they were "friends and equals", but a porter at the Marylebone hotel where they had stayed said Abdulaziz was treated "like a slave".
The prince also claimed he was heterosexual and had a girlfriend in Saudi Arabia, but he had booked appointments with at least two male escorts and one gay masseur, and looked at hundreds of images of men on gay websites. Saud had denied killing his servant until shortly before the trial, before finally admitting that he had caused his death.
The conclusions that you, the jury, might draw from the evidence as to the defendant's murderous intent is very much in dispute. Mr Kelsey-Fry said the only "live factual evidential issues" in the case were about the alleged visit of a gay masseur to the prince's hotel room. He told the jury that it may be thought that the issue was "of some significance to the defendant". Mr Kelsey-Fry questioned the prosecution's characterisation of the two men having a "master-servant" relationship.
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