Five years on, a man faces trial in the opaque Saudi justice system for the killing of Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers in Riyadh – but the Cumbers family is upset at being completely shut out by the authorities
THE NAME OF the Riyadh suburb where Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers was shot dead exactly five years ago elicits very different responses depending on who you talk to in Saudi Arabia. Government officials protest that it is an ordinary district. “Al Suwaidi is a residential area of Riyadh just like any other,” Maj Gen Mansour Al Turki, security spokesman for the interior ministry, insisted during an interview earlier this year. But mention the area to other Saudis, and the response is likely to be similar to the man who told me many of his fellow countrymen refer to Al Suwaidi as the country’s Fallujah.
Six months before Simon and the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner arrived in Saudi Arabia to report on the aftermath of a militant attack in the eastern city of Al Khobar in which 22 foreigners were killed, Al Suwaidi had been the scene of a shoot-out between Saudi security forces and militants. For some time, 15 of the kingdom’s 26 most wanted were men with links to the suburb.
But when the two journalists reached the outskirts of Al Suwaidi in the late afternoon of June 6th to shoot some general footage of the area, there seemed to be little cause for worry. They had waited for permission from the Saudi ministry of information before going, and they had an official minder plus a government-supplied car and driver.
Al Suwaidi, then as now, with its pastel-coloured villas surrounded by towering walls and gleaming SUVs parked outside, does not look like a militant stronghold, much less the teeming slum described in some news reports of the attack in 2004. When I drove around Al Suwaidi in February, accompanied, at the government’s insistence, by a minder for the first and only time during my assignment in Saudi Arabia – this despite official assurances the area was “normal” – the impression was more of a typical sleepy Gulf suburb. Its quiet residential streets were cleaved with highways and dotted with fast-food outlets.
THAT WAS ALSO Gardner’s impression as he and Simon prepared to leave after filming for about 30 minutes. It was their last job, on the last day of their assignment to Saudi Arabia, and when a car pulled up a short distance away there appeared to be scant reason for suspicion.
But the car turned out to be one of two vehicles containing members of an al-Qaeda cell travelling between north and south Riyadh for a meeting with Abdul Aziz Isa al-Muqrin, then leader of an outfit known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. They saw the two foreigners and decided to kill them. “It was a question of being in the wrong place at the wrong time more than anything else,” says Simon’s father, Bob, as he thumbs through photographs at the family home in Navan.
His son died from a shot to the back of the head. Gardner survived, despite being shot six times – in the shoulder, leg and, at point-blank range, four times in the lower back. His injuries left him paraplegic. Even now, five years on, many of the details remain vague. The coroner at Simon’s inquest noted that the case was “very much reliant on second- if not third-hand” accounts. “We’re kept in the dark by the Saudi authorities. We’re still not even 100 per cent sure of what happened to Simon,” says Bob.
His son’s body was found about a kilometre away from where Gardner was shot. Initially the Cumbers family was told that Simon must have run away but the gunmen gave chase and then shot him dead. Some months later the Saudi authorities said they had killed all but one of the six militants responsible. Al-Muqrin himself died in a two-hour gunfight just two weeks after the attack.
They allege the remaining man, who has been in custody since 2005, admitted killing Simon, but he gave a different version of what happened that day. He claimed the gang fired through the back window of the ministry car after Simon jumped in. The driver sped off holding the injured Simon by his collar but lost his grip and the cameraman’s body slumped out on the ground. But the accounts so far are sketchy and several questions remain, says Bob. “We’re relying on the trial to really come out with the facts as to what exactly happened,” he says.
When that trial may take place, and whether it will be open to the public, is another matter. The wheels of justice move at a glacial pace in Saudi Arabia’s notoriously opaque legal system. Simon’s alleged killer, a man named Adil Sa’ad Al-Dubayti Al-Mutayri, who was 28 at the time of the shooting, is one of 991 al-Qaeda suspects currently awaiting trial in the kingdom. No details of trial dates or specific charges related to any of the 991 indicted militants have been made public.
“The entire trial process is quite obscure . . . We’ve heard almost nothing concrete about it whatsoever,” says Gardner.
“We get no information at all,” says Bob. “I’ve been sending two letters a year for five years and we’ve had two letters from the Saudis acknowledging receipt. Nothing else.
“We have been advised that the first we may hear of it will be when the trial is over and the fellow has been executed.”
The last communication the Irish embassy in Riyadh received from the Saudi authorities about the case was in early March. They were told that files relating to the case were with the judges. No other information was forthcoming.
Bob, who travelled to Saudi Arabia with his wife Bronagh to repatriate their son’s body, has asked the Saudi government for permission to attend the trial. He says he would like to make representations on behalf of the family, and perhaps on behalf of the accused.
“I know from Simon’s point of view . . . he was a pacifist and he certainly didn’t believe in the death penalty and neither do we. We do wish the individual to be punished but not in that way.”
WHAT RANKLES WITH the Cumbers family is the way they have been treated by the Saudi authorities. No Saudi official met the family when they arrived in the kingdom some days after the killing and none attended Simon’s funeral or memorial services.
“ are devastated by Simon’s death and our suffering is intensified by the apparent indifference shown by the Saudi government,” wrote Bob in one letter to the Saudi embassy in London. “The failure of your government to extend the common courtesies to me, my wife and family speaks volumes.”
Gardner points out that the case is different to that of other killings carried out by militants in Saudi Arabia. “It was certainly very embarrassing for because they invited us to come to the country. Their ambassador in London at the time said: ‘We have nothing to hide, come to Saudi, we will guarantee your security, you will be looked after’,” he recalls.
Gardner says initial promises of compensation have come to nothing.
“For a country that is rolling in money I think it is very shoddy,” he argues. “I am in a wheelchair for the rest of my life . . . and they could have eased that by dipping into their vast reserves, but they have failed to do that. There’s no excuse for it.”
Gardner, who has not been back to Saudi Arabia, is at pains to stress that he bears no ill will towards ordinary Saudis, many of whom wrote letters of sympathy following the attacks.
NEITHER DOES BOB. “I’ve often been asked who’s to blame for this. I know who is allegedly responsible, but the two people to blame are George W Bush and Tony Blair. Why else would Muslim Arabs attack an innocent team of television correspondents?”
He brushes away the argument that the ideology that drove his son’s killers existed before Bush and Blair came to power. “Not to the same extent, not to the same extent,” he says.
Five years after their son’s death, the Cumbers family is under no illusion about the way things work in Saudi Arabia, but, despite the passing of time, their desire for answers and justice remains as strong as ever. The letters Bob regularly sends to the Saudi authorities will soon be mailed to a Dublin address – the kingdom is due to open an embassy in Ireland later this month. “I am determined to see this to the end,” he says.
