Fury as judges back UK arms sales to Saudis
PROTESTERS are furious after the High Court backed the UK selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
The Campaign Against the Arms Trade claimed the weapons broke international law and Saudis used them in their war on Yemen killing thousands, many of them civilians.
Lord Justice Burnett and Mr Justice HaddonCave dismissed a call for a judicial review. The Government has spent £600,000 defending the case. Andrew Smith, of CAAT, said yesterday they would appeal, and added: “It will be seen as a green light for government to continue arming and supporting brutal dictatorships and human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia.”
The judges said the decision by International Trade Secretary Liam Fox to carry on the trade was not “irrational or unlawful”. They said secret evidence, referred to as “closed material”, not made public for national security reasons, “provides valuable additional support for the conclusion that the decisions ... not to suspend or cancel arms sales to Saudi Arabia were rational”. CAAT says more than 10,000 have been killed since 2015 in the Yemeni civil war.