The UK keeps selling £billions worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia

The UK sells more weapons to Saudi Arabia than any other country. £3.3 billion worth since the Saudis began bombarding Yemen in 2015.

Saudi Arabia has committed numerous war crimes in Yemen including "double tap" bombing a wedding party (a double tap strike is one bomb to do the damage, then another a few minutes later to kill medics and rescue workers) and attacking a boat full of refugees with a helicopter gunship.

British MPs have openly admitted that British weapons have been used by Saudi Arabia to commit war crimes in Yemen. Here's a statement from the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

"Given that the UK has a long history of defence exports to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, and considering the evidence we have heard, it seems inevitable that any violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by the [Saudi led] coalition have involved arms supplied from the UK." [source]

Cartoon credit: Peter Brookes

Aside from their war crimes in Yemen the Saudis also fund terrorist organisations all over the middle east, including ISIS/Daesh. The leaked Hillary Clinton emails made it clear that the Americans knew perfectly well that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are pumping money, resources, and fighters into ISIS.

Even the UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson admits that Saudi Arabia is guilty of funding proxy wars all over the middle east, yet he's determined to continue writing £billions worth of arms export licences for British arms companies to sell the Saudis weapons. His excuse being that if Britain don't sell weapons to this brutal terrorism-funding bunch of Islamist war criminals, then someone else will!

Johnson is so confident of his appalling "we need to cash in on this or someone else will" argument that he even stated it in parliament!

Arming oil rich Islamist regimes is a lucrative business and it really doesn't matter to the Tories how many innocent civilians the Saudis massacre in Yemen using British weapons.

Neither are the Tories bothered that that the ISIS terrorists that UK forces are bombing in Syria and Iraq are full of Saudi fighters and funded by Saudi cash. After all, selling weapons to both sides of a conflict has got to be more profitable than just selling weapons to one hasn't it?

What we can do

• Sign the CAAT petition against Britain selling weapons to Saudi Arabia.

• Spread awareness of British complicity in Saudi war crimes by sharing articles like this, and by talking to people and letting them know that the UK is arming the disgusting Saudi regime.

• Write to your MP and ask them questions about their stance on British arms exports to Saudi Arabia given 1. the war crimes in Yemen 2. The fact that ISIS is awash with Saudi fighters and Saudi money.

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