The UK faced fresh calls to end unrestricted arms sales to Saudi Arabia after the US published a CIA assessment which concluded that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Charities, civil rights groups and others said the disclosure threw the UK’s traditionally close relationship with Riyadh into stark relief in the aftermath of the release of the short, but unambiguous report.
Aid agency Oxfam said that the UK should respond to the increasingly assertive approach taken by the administration of US President Joe Biden, which has already said it would halt arms sales to Riyadh that could be used in the long-running war in Yemen.
Muhsin Siddiquey, Oxfam’s country director in Yemen, said: “At a time that the US seems to be evaluating its relationship with Saudi Arabia we would urge the UK government to do the same and stop its arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which are fueling the conflict in Yemen.”
“Over 12,000 civilian lives have been lost since the start of the war, with atrocities on all sides. We need an immediate ceasefire to ensure no more innocent Yemenis are killed and that humanitarian agencies have safe access to deliver the support they need,” he added.
Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the British House of Commons Defence Select Committee, reiterated a call he had made for the UK to follow the US in halting Yemen-related arms sales.
“The CIA report is unambiguous in its conclusions and this will be inevitably be an embarrassment and shame to the wider country,” Ellwood said.
He called on Saudi Arabia’s ruling royal family to respond swiftly “in response to the loss in international confidence and trust of the crown prince” and the “wider cultural atmosphere that allowed such decisionmaking to go unchallenged.”
The UK has maintained a close diplomatic and military relationship with Riyadh, and is the No. 2 arms exporter to it after the US.
When sales of weapons that could be used in the conflict of Yemen were restarted by the UK last summer, after a court-imposed review, it emerged that £1.4 billion (US$1.95 billion) of bombs, missiles and other arms had been exported to Saudi Arabia.
Anna Stavrianakis, a professor in international relations at the University of Sussex, said that the UK’s open-arms policy had “helped maintain the legitimacy of the [Saudi] regime,” but that was coming under growing pressure after the change of administration in Washington.
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