By STEVE BOGGAN Herald correspondent
LONDON - A Briton who admitted on Saudi Arabian television to blowing up a man in his car appeared to be doomed yesterday when the victim's father, also British, said he would not accept "blood money" to prevent the killer's execution.
Alexander "Sandy" Mitchell astonished British diplomats when he admitted planting a bomb underneath Christopher Rodway's car in November.
Last night, embassy officials in Riyadh were in urgent talks with senior Saudis to find out why they were not told in advance of the confession or of Sunday's broadcast.
Under Islamic Sharia law, Mitchell's confession will almost certainly be enough to secure a murder conviction. And the penalty for murder is death, probably by beheading.
Mitchell, head of anaesthetics at the Internal Security Hospital in Riyadh, where Rodway also worked, appeared on television with a Canadian, William Sampson, and a Belgian, Raaf Schifte, and described, using maps and diagrams, how they blew up Rodway's car.
Yesterday, Rodway's father, Jerry, 69, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, said he wanted the men to be executed if the confession was found to be sound. "I've always believed in the death penalty and, if these men are guilty of killing my son, then I want it carried out.
"I know there is a process under which the perpetrator can offer the victim's family blood money in return for waiving the penalty, but we would have nothing to do with it."
The murder of the 47-year-old Gloucestershire hospital engineer on November 17 marked the beginning of an unprecedented wave of attacks on Britons in the kingdom.
Six days later three others, a British couple and an Irish woman, were injured in another car bombing in the capital.
Three weeks later there was another blast, which left David Brown, from Edinburgh, blind in one eye. The bomb had been placed in an orange carton left on the windscreen of his car in the city of al-Khobar.
So far, nine people of various nationalities have been arrested in connection with the bombings and in a subsequent crackdown on illegal drinking.
No one has cited a motive for the bombings.
Father refuses payoff, demands execution in Saudi Arabia
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