Penelope Hamilton

A year after two terrorists who killed British expat Michael Hamilton in Al-Khobar (eastern Saudi Arabia) were sentenced, his widow Penelope Hamilton expressed her acceptance of the verdict sentencing her husband’s killers to death and considers the ruling to be “correct”. Hamilton’s killers shot him and then dragged his corpse around in front of people after tying it to their car.

Penelope Hamilton, whose husband used to work for APICORP, said in a telephone interview with Asharq Al-Awsat that she attended the sentencing hearing at the Specialised Criminal Court (SCC) in the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, with her son, and that she accepts the ruling of the death sentence and believes it to be the “correct ruling”.

Mrs Hamilton stressed that the “criminals were completely aware of the type of punishment that is given for crimes like the ones that they committed, just as they knew exactly what they were doing”, pointing out they did not express any remorse over the crime that they had committed. She also called into question why some human rights organisations focused on the perpetrators and not on the rights of the victims.

On the other hand, Mrs Hamilton , who has two grandchildren, recounts her meetings with Saudi officials during the period when she was waiting for the verdict, and the support that she received by the Saudi and British authorities after the painful incident. She added that she and her son had “met the (former) Saudi Minister of Justice Muhammad bin Issa in London about a year and a half ago whilst we were still waiting for a date for the hearing. The Saudi minister guaranteed that I would be able to attend the sentencing hearing. I also met Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz a number of times and he gave us all the reassurances that we needed”.

Mrs Hamilton also believes that Saudi Arabia was a victim of terrorism and that the terrorists carried out these acts with the belief that they would harm the security of the country. She clarified that, in her opinion, the problem of terrorism is not exclusive to Saudi Arabia, but is present in the Middle East and in the West as well.