A CORONER wants to know how teenager Ben Mills was able to hang himself with a sheet inside a young offenders institution.

Ben, 18, from Thame, killed himself two days after being remanded in custody for theft.

An inquest yesterday heard he was found hanging by a sheet from a knob at the window of his cell at the Reading Young Offenders Institution.

Coroner Joe Pim accepted the jury's verdict of suicide, but said he would be taking up the issue of why a knob on a cell window was strong enough to support a person's weight.

The inquest at Reading was told that Ben had shown no signs of being suicidal to prison officers when he was admitted.

But traffic warden Peggy Long, who knew the teenager THE British nurses freed from Saudi Arabia made a terrible mistake in selling their stories before persuading the country of their innocence, according to publicist Max Clifford.

Mr Clifford, speaking at the Oxford Union last night, said the pressure now on ex-John Radcliffe nurse Deborah Parry, 39, was his greatest concern.

He told Oxford students: "I think that Deborah Parry is particularly fragile. Whether she can stand up to the media spotlight remains to be seen.

"But I think both of them need help. Both need to be looked after."

Mr Clifford said he had been called in to offer advice by the nurses' solicitors. But he said his advice to the women had not been accepted.

lWe're innocent: Page 5

And the man who has made a fortune from selling kiss and tell stories added: "I would have thought the priority would have been to try to rebuild their lives, rather than talking to the media.

"If either were my daughter, they would not be doing interviews. They would be cared for, looked after and loved, and given the chance to recover from what has been an horrendous experience." "I did not want them to do any deals with anyone. As far as I am concerned it is up to the two nurses to convince people of their innocence. I wanted them to talk to everyone."

The PR king said he was certain that Parry and Lucille McLaughlan were innocent of the murder of fellow nurse Yvonne Gilford, and he could see why they were tempted by offers of six figure sums.

"What happened over there is nothing to do with justice. The treatment they received was horrendous. I can understand the confessions in this situation.

"If what they are saying is true - and from what I know about it , it is true - you can understand them doing anything to stop the pain and indignity, and psychological attack."

He said the nurses' release had been intended to boost Anglo-Saudi relations. But he warned information coming out represented "an incredible damnation of the Saudi system and of how the women were treated."

Mr Clifford was speaking hours after nurses Lucille McLauchlan and Deborah Parry had disappeared with different national newspaper representatives, immediately after returning home.

Outrage at reports that the women had agreed to six figure deals for their stories began even before their arrival in Britain yesterday amid media frenzy at the airport.

The two women's murder sentences were commuted on Tuesday by King Fahd.

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