William Sampson, falsely imprisoned and tortured by Saudis dies alone in Britain still looking for redress

The manner of William Sampson's death says everything about the cruel and tragic last years of his life.

The dual Canadian-British citizen who was imprisoned and tortured in Saudi Arabia for almost three years, then spent the rest of his life trying to get redress, died of an apparent heart attack in front of his computer while researching court cases on the Internet.

He had an appeal pending in the European Court of Human Rights over a British court ruling that denied his right to sue the Saudis for his treatment.

The 52-year-old Sampson died alone in his apartment in the Penrith Lake District of northern England. His body was not discovered for almost a week, the Toronto Star reported.

Sampson lost touch with friends and family. He was obsessed with a quest to clear himself of charges he was involved with bootlegging liquor in the strict Muslim kingdom where he worked and of murder in the car-bomb death of a British man.

Sampson believed authorities framed him and his British co-accused to cover up a terror attack against foreigners working in the kingdom. It coincided with a warning from Osama bin Laden that all foreigners leave the country.

His health badly damaged by the treatment he received from his Saudi captors, Sampson fought vainly to sue the Saudis over his treatment.

"Beating, kicking, punching, being bounced off the wall, being knocked to the floor, being kicked while I was on the floor," Sampson told CBC News after a pardon from Saudi Arabia's ruler brought his release in 2003.

"The worst that I endured of it at the time was being hung upside down and beaten across the backside, the feet, the scrotum. The pain from that is just incredible. I just felt like my entire body was about to explode out of my ears and my eyes."

The treatment of Sampson and others produced confessions that were broadcast on Saudi television.

Sampson nurtured an abiding bitterness against the Canadian government, which he felt had abandoned him. Consular officials visited him in prison several times but only with guards present. They apparently knew he was being tortured but didn't go public for fear he would be abused even more, the Star reported.

He complained to a House of Commons committee in 2003 that Canadian diplomats offered no support and that it was the British government that eventually secured his release, though later it emerged a U.S.-Saudi prisoner swap may also have been a factor.

"Did Canada — or the rest of the world — learn anything from William Sampson's 31-month ordeal in a Riyadh jail?" asked Marni Soupcoff in a National Post column.

Former Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who lobbied hard for Sampson's release, said his death was "not in vain." The case "taught the Canadian government to be more proactive in the release of Canadians wrongfully tortured and detained overseas."

But Soupcoff cited other cases after Sampson, from Maher Arar's rendition to Syria for torture after 9/11, to the murder of Montreal photojournalist Sahra Kazemi in an Iranian prison in 2003 and the abandonment of Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik in Sudan for years without travel documents until the courts ordered Ottawa to bring him home.

The question arises how much support Canadians abroad will get now that the Conservative government is cutting its diplomatic profile abroad, as outlined in last week's budget?

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has defended the cuts, saying he's "very confident that we will continue to be able to do a great job in diplomacy, a great job in trade."