Britain broke law in allowing arms exports to Saudi Arabia: court

LONDON: Britain broke the law by allowing arms sales to Saudi Arabia that might have been deployed in the war in Yemen, an English court ruled on Thursday after activists said there was evidence the weapons had been used in violation of human rights statutes, a British wire service reported on Thursday.

While the court’s decision does not mean Britain must immediately halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia, it does mean that there is a stay on the granting of new export licenses to sell arms to the kingdom - Britain’s biggest weapons purchaser.

The United Nations has described the conflict in Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people including thousands of civilians, as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

“The Court of Appeal has concluded that the process of decision-making by the government was wrong in law in one significant respect,” said Terence Etherton, England’s second most senior judge. Handing down the ruling, Etherton said the government made “no concluded assessments of whether the Saudi-led coalition had committed violations of international humanitarian law in the past, during the Yemen conflict”.

Saudi Arabia says ending British arms exports would help Iran. International Trade Minister Liam Fox said he disagreed with the judgment and would seek permission to appeal.

“Alongside this we are carefully considering the implications of the judgment for decision making,” Fox said.

“While we do this we will not grant any new licenses for export to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners which might be used in the conflict in Yemen.”

Britain is the world’s sixth largest seller of arms, after the United States, Russia, France, Germany and China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Saudi Arabia accounted for 43 percent of Britain’s global arms sales in the past decade. BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest defense company, generates 14 percent, or around 2.6 billion pounds ($3.3 billion), of its group sales from Saudi.

“We continue to support the UK Government in providing equipment, support and training under government-to-government agreements between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia,” a spokesman for BAE Systems said in a statement.

The British government is negotiating a multi-billion-pound deal to sell Saudi Arabia 48 new Typhoon fighter jets0. The legal action against the British government was brought by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, which wants to end the global arms trade and argued that British weapons were likely to have been used in Yemen in violation of human rights law.