Two British nurses accused of murder in Saudi Arabia suffered a setback yesterday when a friend of one of them said she believed the pair were guilty.
Ms Rosemary Kidman, a friend of Ms Deborah Parry, who could face death by beheading, said the nurse had been acting strangely in the week after the Australian nurse, Ms Yvonne Gilford, was stabbed to death.
Asked if she believed Ms Parry and Lucille McLauchlan had killed Ms Gilford, Ms Kidman, who worked in the same hospital in Dharan, replied: "Yes, I do.
"I feel they are very much guilty and everyone at the hospital feels that also, over there in Dhahran. And we took a lot to come to that."
McLauchlan (31), from Dundee, has been convicted for her part in the killing and has been sentenced to 500 lashes and eight years in prison.
It is still unclear whether Ms Parry (38), from Alton, in Hampshire, has been convicted yet despite earlier reports that she had been sentenced to public execution.
Their treatment at the hands of the Saudi courts has caused diplomatic tension with Britain.
Speaking on Sky News, Ms Kidman said Ms Parry had seemed extremely agitated in the week between the killing and her arrest. She said: "Debbie had fallen out with Yvonne six weeks before this happened. She [Debbie] told me that.
"Debbie was very erratic behaviour that week (sic). She was not wanting to work. She was anxious.
"I know another friend who said, `Oh, did you see? She was waving her arms around the passageways. They've got to get her off-compound'."
"Debbie had asked me during that week: `What do I say if they question me?' I said, `Debbie, you be honest! You're innocent. You be honest! You don't have to worry'."
However, Ms Kidman rejected the theory of the Saudi police that Ms Gilford and Ms Parry had been lesbian lovers.
"I just don't know why or how that came out. I think they were grasping at straws what to come out with. I really don't know," she said.
But Ms Parry's brother-in-law, Mr Jonathan Ashbee, insisted there was another reason for her strange behaviour.
"The family has suffered a good deal of tragedy in the past. She has suffered four unexpected deaths in her lifetime and I know that this has had a very deep and lasting effect on Debbie," he said. "I believe I would have confessed to killing my own grandmother if I had done to me what those girls had done to them."