Dear friends,

Today the government has announced it will resume licensing arms
sales to the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen.

CAAT will be exploring
( [link removed] ) all
options available to challenge this decision.

These arms sales had been put on hold following our victory at
the Court of Appeal last year. The Court found that the
government had failed to properly assess the risk of weapons
exported from the UK being used in violations of international
humanitarian law in Yemen, and ordered the government to retake
all its previous decisions in a lawful way.

This morning, a written statement
( [link removed] )
by the Secretary of State for International Trade Liz Truss
said the government had completed that review, and concluded that
war crimes committed in the attacks on Yemen were "isolated
incidents". She said it would now begin “the process of clearing
the backlog of licence applications for Saudi Arabia and its
coalition partners.”

We are appalled by this decision. In five years of war we have
seen the Saudi-led forces bomb weddings and funerals, market
places and warehouses, schools and hospitals – these are not
isolated incidents but a pattern of repeated breaches of
International Humanitarian Law.

We know that the UK has licensed billions of pounds of arms sales
to the Coalition - at least £5.3 billion in published figures
since the war began, but many billions more under the secretive
open licensing system.

We know that UK weapons – warplanes, bombs and missiles – are
being used by the Saudi-led forces in Yemen. The government
itself admits this.

UK rules expressly prohibit the licensing of arms exports where
there is a clear risk they might be used in violations of
international humanitarian law.

Yet the UK government has continued to support the Saudi-led
attacks on Yemen, despite the terrible human impact of the
bombing – and has fought our legal challenge every step of the
way. Now it wants to carry on with business as usual.

We will be considering this new decision with our lawyers, and
will be exploring every avenue to stop these sales and we will,
of course, keep you updated with next steps.

In the meantime, you can read the initial media response in the
Independent
( [link removed] )
and Guardian
( [link removed] )
.

With determination,

Campaign Against Arms Trade ( [link removed] )

Sarah

Campaign Against Arms Trade
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