A select committee in the UK’s Parliament is set to call for a ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Jet fighters of the Saudi Royal air force © AFP 2016/ FAYEZ NURELDINE UK High Court to Start Legal Review of Country’s Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia MOSCOW (Sputnik) — A select committee on arms export controls in the UK’s Parliament is set to meet later this week to finalize a report on Saudi-led strikes in Yemen and call for a ban on the sale of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, the Guardian reported Monday. The report is expected to be highly critical of the Saudi-led intervention, while pushing for a ban on arms sales to the country. In July, it was reported in the media that the United Kingdom had sold over 3 billion pounds ($3.9 billion) worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia in the period between April 2015 and March 2016, the first year of the Saudi-led intervention in the Yemeni conflict at the request of the country’s president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The UK government has repeatedly been blamed by humanitarian organizations, including Oxfam and Amnesty International, for fueling the Yemeni conflict by supplying Saudi Arabia with arms. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has conducted a military operation in Yemen against Houthi forces since March 2015. Since the coalition launched its air campaign, several rights groups have documented the use of banned cluster munition in several airstrikes, claiming that they were deployed in civilian-populated areas, wounding and killing civilians.
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