Ariana News Agency-\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The Guardain:<\/em> Three judges said that a decision made in secret in 2016 had led them to decide that Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Liam Fox and other key ministers had illegally signed off on arms exports without properly assessing the risk to civilians.<\/p>\n Sir Terence Etherton, the master of the rolls, said on Tuesday that ministers had \u201cmade no concluded assessments of whether the Saudi-led coalition had committed violations of international humanitarian law in the past, during the Yemen conflict, and made no attempt to do so\u201d.<\/p>\n As a result, the court said that the UK export licensing process was \u201cwrong in law in one significant respect\u201d and ordered Fox, the international trade secretary, to hold an immediate review of at least \u00a34.7bn worth of arms deals with Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), which brought the case against Fox, welcomed the verdict that continuing to license military equipment for export to the Gulf state was unlawful.<\/p>\n Thousands of civilians have been killed since the civil war in Yemen began in March 2015 with indiscriminate bombing by a Saudi-led coalition that is supplied by the west and accused of being responsible for about two-thirds of the 11,700 killed in direct attacks.<\/p>\n A critical passage in the ruling added that \u201ca close reading\u201d of evidence supplied in secret suggested that in \u201cearly 2016\u201d \u2013 probably when David Cameron was prime minister \u2013 that there had been a covert change of UK policy towards Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a decision, or a change of position, so that there would be no assessment of past violation of IHL [international humanitarian law]\u201d by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Etherton, Lord Justice Irwin and Lord Justice Singh concluded.<\/p>\n Dr Anna Stavrianakis, a senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Sussex, said the verdict demonstrated that ministers had \u201cturned a blind eye\u201d to events in Yemen. \u201cThis finally bring some accountability to the UK\u2019s role in the war,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Fox responded by suspending new arms sales to Saudi Arabia while promising to appeal against the verdict. Labour called for an full inquiry and the permanent end of all arms sales to Riyadh.<\/p>\n The international trade secretary made an emergency statement to MPs in which he argued that the court had not determined whether it was ethical to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, but \u201cconcerns the rationality of the process used to reach decisions\u201d.<\/p>\n Fox added: \u201cWhile we do this, we will not grant any new licences for export to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners which might be used in the conflict in Yemen.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, Fox was understood to have privately told at least one MP that he expected that the review process called for by the court would take about 10 weeks \u2013 and would not lead to any of the previous licensing decisions being overturned.<\/p>\n Arms trade campaigners say that Paveway, Brimstone and Storm Shadow bombs of the type used by the Saudi air force in Yemen are covered by separate \u201copen licences\u201d, which have not been suspended by Fox, and are only under review. \u201cThe bombs will continue,\u201d one source added.<\/p>\n Arms export licensing decisions of the type held to be unlawful are made by Fox, as international trade secretary, on the advice of the foreign secretary, an office currently held by Hunt and previously by Johnson.<\/p>\n Earlier this month it emerged that Johnson had recommended that the UK allow Saudi Arabia to buy bomb parts expected to be deployed in Yemen, days after an airstrike on a potato factory in the country had killed 14 people in 2016.<\/p>\n Labour called for a full parliamentary or public inquiry into arms sales to the Gulf kingdom. The party\u2019s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said: \u201cUK advice, assistance and arms supplies to Saudi\u2019s war in Yemen is a moral stain on our country. Arms sales to Saudi must stop now.\u201d<\/p>\n Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a Labour backbench MP who was in court for the ruling, blamed past and present British foreign secretaries and other ministers for ignoring the evidence of civilian casualties. Focusing on Johnson, the Tory leadership frontrunner, Russell-Moyle added: \u201cThis goes right to the top of the Tory party.\u201d<\/p>\n The UK has licensed the sale of at least \u00a34.7bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the start of the civil war in Yemen, with most of the recorded sales taking place before 2018.<\/p>\n Both Johnson and Hunt have defended the UK\u2019s arms relationship with Riyadh, although other European countries have halted sales. Germany said it would no longer supply arms following the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul last autumn.<\/p>\n Andrew Smith of CAAT called on ministers to halt the arms sales immediately: \u201cIt should never have taken a court case brought by campaigners to force the government to follow its own rules.\u201d<\/p>\n The verdict was welcomed by Yemenis in Sana\u02bda, the Houthi-controlled capital of the country, where heavy bombing by the coalition over the last four years has hit hundreds of civilian targets.<\/p>\n \u201cI will be very glad if this ruling makes a difference. Selling weapons to Saudi Arabia is a contribution to killing Yemeni people so we feel grateful to the British judges who considered this,\u201d said Ahmed al-Hatami, a student at Sana\u2019a University.<\/p>\n The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, on a trip to London, argued ahead of a bilateral meeting with Hunt that arms sales must continue: \u201cThe only people that will benefit from the ending of arms sales to Saudi Arabia will be \u2018the death to America\u2019 crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" British arms sales to Saudi Arabia have been ruled unlawful by the court of appeal in a critical judgment that also accused ministers of ignoring whether airstrikes that killed civilians in Yemen broke humanitarian law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_mat_hreflang_tags":[],"addvideo":"","video_duration":"","farsit":"","target":"0","top_stories":"0","top":"0"},"categories":[305],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia"],"acf":{"myctype":"change","target":false,"top_stories":false,"top":false,"farsit":""},"yoast_head":"\n