LONDON: Britain broke the law by allowing arms sales to Saudi Arabia that might have been used in Yemen's war, a court ruled, after activists said there was a clear risk the weapons could be operated in violation of human rights legislation. 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 licences 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," judge Terence Etherton said.
Handing down the ruling, he 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." 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," he 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.
Fox told lawmakers Britain had always taken its export control obligations very seriously and would continue to do so. Britain had "fully and robustly engaged" with incidences of concern. "Our whole assessment has been infused with IHL (international humanitarian law) considerations, indeed everything was looked at through the prism of IHL," he said.
Iran would be the only beneficiary of any end to arms exports from Britain to Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's minister of state for foreign affairs said yesterday, adding that the deployment of weapons in Yemen was legitimate.
A UK court earlier found that Britain broke the law by allowing arms sales to Saudi Arabia that might have been used in Yemen's war. The ruling does not halt Britain's arms exports but means the granting of new licences will be paused.
"The decision by the court in the UK has to do with procedures for licensing, not any wrongdoing that took place," Adel al-Jubeir told reporters in London. "The coalition is an ally of the West and the coalition is fighting a legitimate war at the behest of a legitimate government to stop Iran and its proxies from taking over a strategically important country - so the only beneficiary of a cut-off of weapons to the coalition is going to be Iran." - Reuters