Human rights groups condemn steep rise in UK arms sales to Saudis

More than £1bn worth of bombs, missiles and rockets were sold under government licence to Saudi Arabia over three months last summer, according to human rights groups.

The extraordinary increase in sales, which coincided with a surge of airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition on Houthi rebels in Yemen, was condemned by Saferworld, which campaigns against arms sales to repressive regimes.

Last month Saferworld and Amnesty commissioned a legal opinion from Professor Philippe Sands QC and other lawyers which concluded that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia, in the context of its military intervention and bombing campaign in Yemen, were breaking national, EU and international law.

UK arms sales in the three-month period from July to September 2015 for the export category that covers missiles, rockets and bombs amounted to £1,066,216,510, the BIS documents show. They were sold under five separate licences.

In the preceding three-month period, sales to Saudi Arabia for the same category of munitions amounted to only £9m. Saferworld condemned the extraordinarily steep increase.

“All of these are for air force end use, with the components for air-to-surface rockets for training purposes,” a Saferworld spokesperson said.

“The day after the prime minister [David Cameron] claimed to be ‘trying to encourage a political process in Yemen’ and declared ‘there is no military solution in Yemen’, official figures reveal that in just the three months July to September, the government approved the sale of over £1bn worth of bombs for the use of the Royal Saudi Air Force.

“This is the same air force that has bombed hospitals, schools, markets, grain warehouses, ports and a displaced persons camp and helped to turn Yemen into a living nightmare. That’s a 100-fold increase over the previous three months.”

Allan Hogarth, Amnesty International UK’s head of policy, said: “These figures are deeply worrying, showing that the UK continued to dispatch huge amounts of weaponry to Saudi Arabia despite overwhelming evidence that the Saudi war machine was laying waste to Yemeni homes, schools and hospitals.

“As officials were signing off these sales, hundreds – possibly thousands – of Yemeni civilians were dying in a terrifying barrage of indiscriminate Saudi airstrikes in the country.

“The law is crystal clear: any Saudi attack, whether deliberate or not, that fails to adequately protect civilians is a violation of international law. And our obligations are equally clear – as a major supplier of Saudi Arabia’s weaponry, the UK is legally obliged to suspend arms exports.

“At the moment, despite all the evasive remarks from government ministers, the truth is that we are selling weapons to the Saudis in the full knowledge of the grave risk that they’ll be used to kill Yemeni civilians.

“Instead of burying their heads in the sand over Saudi Arabia’s behaviour in Yemen, Downing Street should immediately suspend export licences for all further UK arms bound for Saudi Arabia, and allow a full investigation into allegations of serious breaches of international humanitarian law by Saudi Arabia in Yemen.”

Amnesty pointed out that in the previous quarter (1 April-30 June), the UK authorised over £1.7bn worth of arms exports to Saudi Arabia, with the vast majority of this for Typhoon combat aircraft and their spare parts and bombs.

Arms experts believe the third quarter’s licensing of bombs represents a replenishing of munitions following earlier large-scale usage of the weaponry in the conflict in Yemen.

A government spokesperson said: “We operate one of the most rigorous and transparent arms export control regimes in the world with each licence application assessed on a case by case basis, taking account of all relevant information, to ensure compliance with our legal obligations. No licence is issued if it does not meet these requirements.

“We regularly raise with Saudi Arabian-led coalition and the Houthis, the need to comply with international humanitarian law (IHL) in Yemen. We monitor the situation carefully and have offered the Saudi authorities advice and training in this area.”

Responding to the legal opinion obtained by Saferworld and Amnesty last month, the government insisted it was not taking part in the military campaign in Yemen.

A spokesman said at the time: “Her Majesty’s government takes its arms export responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world.

“We rigorously examine every application on a case-by-case basis against the consolidated EU and national arms export licensing criteria. Risks around human rights abuses are a key part of our assessment.”