IBTimes: For over a year now, the British government has flatly rejected claims that the Saudi Arabian-led coalition has violated the laws of war during its conflict in Yemen, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Although the British government supplied nearly £3 billion worth of weapons and equipment to the Saudis in 2015 alone, ministers insist that Britain’s arms export licensing procedures are amongst the most stringent in the world and that there’s no serious risk of British supplied equipment being used unlawfully. But these claims – already disingenuous and misleading – were further discredited this week by fresh evidence from Amnesty International that banned British-made cluster bombs have been used by coalition forces in Yemen.
Since March 2015, there have been a number of well-documented attacks by the coalition using cluster munitions in populated areas. Human Rights Watch has researched 16 such attacks, in which at least 19 civilians were killed and at least 66 wounded. But this is the first identified case involving a British-made cluster bomb.
Amnesty researchers found one partially unexploded BL-755 bomb, manufactured by Hunting Engineering Ltd., in the 1970s, which was evidently used by the coalition in Yemen’s Hajjah Governorate, six miles from the Saudi border. Cluster munitions, which are designed to release smaller bomblets that scatter over a wide area, pose a particular danger to civilians, especially children who pick up unexploded ordnance without realising what they are. Each BL-755 contains 147 submunitions.
It’s true that these British-made bombs were sold to a coalition member before the existence of an international convention banning cluster munitions, which Britain ratified in 2010 and has since championed. Nonetheless, the fact that such weapons are still being used by a coalition which we support and arm would normally prompt an investigation and a serious review of British policy. But these are not normal times. In recent months, British policy on Yemen appears to have hardened, becoming more supportive of the coalition in Yemen and more dismissive of the human rights groups that expose their violations.