Since his confession, they have failed to keep a promise to grant renewed consular access to him. Yet for a country that a decade ago took three days to admit that Kuwait had been invaded, the Saudis have been open about announcing the bomb explosions. British diplomats in Riyadh, by contrast, have been less than informative. By mutual consent, Westerners and Saudis live separate lives. The Western housing compounds in Riyadh have long been places of refuge from the country's rigid Wahhabi strain of Islam.
Western women walk freely without the black abbaya robe and drive their own cars.
The religious police, the Mutawa, do not enter. The compounds provide perfect cover for illegal drinking. Villas and communal halls have been turned into pubs. Some compounds dominated by Saudi Arabia's 23,000 Britons are well-known for their drinking culture. Others are known as the Empire and the Raffles.