He was told by his Saudi lawyer that the sentence called for the victim’s head to be “partially” severed and the body fixed to an X-shaped cross in public view for three days.

Public beheadings are a regular event in Saudi Arabia. The crucifixion procedure is reserved as an exemplary punishment under sharia (Islamic law) for heinous crimes. Two highway robbers have been executed in this way in the past 20 years.

Mitchell was one of six Britons arrested in Riyadh after a series of bomb attacks on westerners three years ago. They were released last month after interventions by the British government and the Prince of Wales.

Speaking for the first time since his release, Mitchell, 44, said yesterday that he was tortured into confessing crimes that he had not committed.

He was arrested in December 2000 after Christopher Rodway, a British engineer, had been killed in the first attack and his wife Jane injured.

Mitchell said he was forced to stand for nine days, chained with his hands above his head and prevented from sleeping. Each night he was tethered hand and foot and suspended with a metal bar behind his legs to expose his buttocks and the soles of his feet. He was beaten with an axe handle until he gave the “right” answer.

“It went on and on,” he said. “I used to consider myself a strong person but everybody has their breaking point. I was alone and in pain, and if it wasn’t me being beaten it was others and I could hear their screams.”

He confessed to being part of a bomb plot masterminded by the British embassy. “It was a ridiculous story, but that was what they wanted,” he said.

The bombings are believed to have been the work of Saudi dissidents but the authorities had insisted they were part of a turf war between gangs of bootleggers. Alcohol is forbidden in Saudi Arabia, but private bars in western compounds were common and as long as the drinking was discreet the Saudis had traditionally turned a blind eye.

Mitchell admits that he used to help to run a bar, but says he gave up his interest in it in 1999 after his son was born. “The turf war didn’t exist,” he said. “That was made up by the Saudi secret police to justify their own existence.”

He was kept in solitary confinement for 15 months and was in prison for nearly a year before he saw a lawyer. When he did, he was horrified to find that he had been “tried” and sentenced to death, although no evidence other than his forced confession had been brought against him.

About 45 people were executed in Saudi Arabia last year and 75 in 2001. But Mitchell says that his Saudi lawyer explained that he had been singled out for draconian treatment. Partial beheading and crucifixion is one of the punishments known under sharia as al-hadd, the limit, a reference to the ultimate sanction allowed by God.

Mitchell says his lawyer tried to assure him that it would not be carried out, but the sentence was not commuted. Believing he could be killed any day, Mitchell sought a way of living with his fear: “I used to think, you can take my head but you can’t take my soul.”

Additional reporting: Nick Fielding

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