The British government has expelled a Saudi diplomat in a move newspapers linked to allegations he bribed a London police officer for information on British residents.
"We have asked the Saudi Arabian ambassador to withdraw a Saudi diplomat, and . . . a diplomat has been recalled to Saudi Arabia and is no longer accredited to the Saudi mission in London," a British Foreign Office spokesman said this morning.
He declined to comment further. London police also declined to give details of the case, which involves a current prosecution. But the Timesnamed the diplomat as Ali al-Shamarani and described him as an "intelligence officer".
It said that over four years, Shamarani had allegedly paid several thousand pounds to a police officer for information about Middle Eastern citizens living in Britain.