Campaigners on Friday delivered fake missiles to Downing Street to protest Britain’s continued supply of arms to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns that they are being used against civilians in Yemen.
Amnesty International protesters wearing white mechanics’ boiler suits delivered five replicas of the 1.8m-long Paveway-IV weapons used by British-supplied Saudi jets outside British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office.
“Ministers need to stop burying their heads in the sand and immediately suspend arms sales for the Saudi war machine,” Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said.
Photo: AP
The Saudi-led coalition began bombing Iran-backed rebels in Yemen in March last year to support Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in a campaign that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein on Friday said had killed 3,218 civilians.
The British government conceded that UK-supplied defense equipment has been used in the campaign, but said it has “one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world.”
It said it has raised allegations of civilian targeting with the kingdom, but refused a call last month by parliament’s international development committee to suspend exports until the matter can be properly investigated.
Under Britain’s arms export criteria, licenses cannot be granted if there is “a clear risk that the items might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”
The British government approved nearly ￡3 billion (US$4.34 billion) of arms licenses for exports to Saudi Arabia in the six months to January, according to the international development committee.
Amnesty said that Britain last year transferred 58 combat aircraft and 2,400 Paveway-IV missiles to the kingdom.
“It is absolutely shocking that the UK is still selling billions of pounds’ worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia even as the civilian casualties have mounted and mounted in Yemen,” Allen said.
A second parliamentary committee, on arms export controls, last week launched an inquiry into the use of British manufactured arms in Yemen, and is to hold its first evidence session next week.
British non-governmental organization Campaign Against Arms Trade is also pursuing legal action against the government in a bid to suspend exports.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline posed as a commercial pilot and as a current flight attendant to obtain hundreds of free flights from US airlines, authorities said on Tuesday. Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was arrested in Panama after being indicted on wire fraud charges in US federal court in Hawaii in October last year. He pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his extradition to the US. Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other
RSS