Arms sales on trial again
April 22rd saw fantastic news as CAAT was granted permission to bring their legal challenge over arms sales supplied for use in the war on Yemen to the High Court. This is another chance to hold the government to account on these heinous sales and put a stop to them.
Six years of war fought with UK weapons has caused massive devastation to the country and killed at least 8,759 civilians. The government has ignored allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law and numerous attacks on schools, hospitals and funerals; claiming they are ‘isolated incidents’.
In 2019 legal action by CAAT forced the government to stop issuing export licences for weapons that could be used in the war in Yemen. The government was ordered to retake all its previous decisions in a lawful manner.
But in July 2020 the government resumed arms sales, and since then it has licensed more than £1.6 billion additional weapons sales in support of the war. Declassified also revealed recently that BAE Systems have sold £17.6bn of weaponry to Saudi Arabia during the war.
This permission to proceed puts more pressure on the UK government to end these sales once and for all. The Yemeni people cannot wait any longer. You can read more about the legal challenge here and you can still sign the open letter demanding that Boris Johnson stops the arms sales now.