Saudi Arabia is one of five countries which severely employ death penalty by public beheading. This arouses fear for the life of Shayden Thorne, 25, with terrorism charges filed in Riyadh Special Criminal Court, the National Times reported. Thorne has been in trial for 18 months now following his arrest in November of 2011. Although Mr Thorne have said to accept a state-appointed lawyer and been regularly attending trials, he was not seen in court for four days now.

The Saudi Security Services arrested Mr Thorne through a raid in a compound where suspected extremist have allegedly been in hiding. The extremist group is indicted of hacking mujahideen Web sites to plot a war against Afghanistan. These said extremists have a long withstanding opposition against the oppression and corruption of the Royal family in Saudi Arabia.

Shayden's younger brother, Junaid Thorne, 23, was also arrested in Riyadh for capturing videos of people protesting outside a Mosque in the Saudi capital. Shayden and Junaid have said to reside in Saudi Arabia for 12 years. Junaid was given freedom in February but Saudi officials have asked him to surrender his passport and thus was forced to stay in Saudi even with his residency expired.

The family of the Throne brothers point fingers at Australian officials, particularly the Foreign Affairs Department, for being reluctant about the case. Foreign Minister Bob Carr defends that Australian diplomats have extended their representations on behalf of the brothers for at least 50 times. Mr Carr has, in fact, made a correspondence to diplomats that the Australian government wants the issue to be resolved as urgent as possible. As a result of the officials' speedy take on the case, Saudi officials gave permissions for Shayden to go out for sunlight and exercise in the course of his 18 months stay in prison.

Although a spokeswoman for Mr Carr established that Shayden could possibly be given the maximum sentence of death penalty for his act of terrorism, she has also reassuringly said that, "There has been no indication from Saudi contacts that it (death penalty) might be a prospect in this case."

The Thorne brothers' mother remained nervous for the life of his sons, specifically Shayden, whom she knows no news of. She insists that officials are not doing their very best efforts for his sons to reunite with them. She claims that her son was tortured. "I thought it was a bit strange and I kept trying to call him, I wasn't getting through and his brother at the time, he knew what happened but he thought he better not tell me because I would worry. He thought that I would freak out, which is the truth."

She defends his son against accusation of being a terrorist even if officials say that he was arrested carrying a laptop with radical content. "That same laptop, he used to bring it around to the house because we had no TV... He had all kinds of movies that he put on that laptop."

With his son's disappearance four days ago, fear looms her heart every second of each day, "It's well known over there that when these Saudi secret police take somebody, you just never know if you are going to see them again..."