Afgelopen zaterdag berichtte ik al over het feit dat het Pentagon het Congres heeft voorgelogen en dat speciale VS troepen meevechten in Jemen, niet tegen IS
zoals de VS telkens weer durfde te beweren, maar tegen de Houthi
rebellen, die NB IS en Al Qaida in eigen land met succes hebben
bestreden*.
Nu
blijkt ook dat Groot-Brittannië veel meer doet in Jemen, dan de
Britse overheid tot nu toe heeft toegegeven. Dit naast de enorme
leveringen van munitie en militaire hardware aan de reli-fascistrische dictatuur van Saoedi-Arabië, waar de man van May ook
nog eens een smerige rol speelt, hij werkt voor BAE Systems, een Britser ‘hardware wapenfabrikant’, die grote overheidscontracten krijgt en waar de Britse premier voor lobbyt….. Hierdoor stinkt hare kwaadaardigheid May zelf ronduit naar corruptie en vriendjespolitiek…….
Groot-Brittannië
heeft in totaal 7.000 mensen die de moorddadige Saoedische luchtmacht
ter zijde staan bij training van personeel en bij onderhoud plus
bevoorrading (ook met clusterbommen en andere munitie) van door GB geleverd vliegend oorlogstuig……
Hier een artikel van Whitney Webb eerder geplaatst op MindPress News, waar o.a. wordt gesteld dat de oorlog tegen de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen intussen, volgens de VN, 5.500 mensen het leven heeft gekost en waarbij meer dan 9.000 mensen werden verwond…… Uiteraard kan dit cijfer niet kloppen, immers door de bombardementen is de infrastructuur van Jemen voor het overgrote deel vernield, wat onder meer tot een gigantische cholera uitbraak heeft geleid…… Dit nog naast een difterie uitbraak en de honger die al een paar jaar lang aanhoudt in Jemen, duidelijk een gevolg van de illegale oorlog die Saoedi-Arabië tegen het sjiitische volk van Jemen voert en waarbij de VS en Groot-Brittannië de helpende hand bieden……..
7,000
UK Personnel Helping Saudi Arabia Bomb Yemen, New Report Reveals
May
4, 2018 at 7:54 am
Written
by Whitney
Webb
(MPN) — While
criticism leveled against the U.K. government for its involvement in
Yemen has focused on the country’s arms
sales to
Saudi Arabia, newly published government documents reveal that the
U.K.’s complicity in the conflict runs much deeper.
The
documents were made public in a newly published paper titled “UK
Personnel Supporting the Saudi Armed Forces – Risk, Knowledge and
Accountability,”
which provides details as to the real “footprint” of the
estimated 7,000 employees of U.K. contractor companies, civil
servants, and temporarily deployed military personnel currently
aiding the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) and other Saudi security
forces in the waging of their brutal bombing campaign against Yemen.
According
to the UN, that bombing campaign has killed 5,500 civilians
and injured over 9,000 since it began in 2015. It has also targeted
civilian infrastructure,
which has completely collapsed. Among civilian targets have been
hospitals and clinics, whose destruction coupled with the Saudi-led
coalition’s blockade of the country has allowed a “preventable”
cholera epidemic to reach well over
1 million cases.
Written
by researchers Michael Lewis and Katherine Templar, the report –
among other notable findings — revealed that U.K. employees of U.K.
weapons giant BAE Systems have
continued to maintain the weapon systems of U.K. military aircraft
sold to the Saudis, including training and operational squadrons,
throughout the conflict. The forces thus supported include aircraft
directly involved in the bombing campaign targeting Yemen at Taif air
base and elsewhere.
The
basis for the direct and continued involvement of U.K. personnel in
aiding the RSAF comes from a secret government-to-government
agreement first signed in 1986. The agreement — which had never
been seen by the U.K. Parliament, or published until the release of
this report — includes secret support clauses for U.K.-manufactured
aircraft that commit U.K. personnel to the “arming and support”
of those aircraft during active armed conflict, regardless of whether
the conflict is “lawful” or directly involves the U.K.
RSAF Certificate of Appreciation given to military aircraft technician (UK national) employed by BAE Systems, Dhahran, 1991. (name withheld)
The
documents also show that the commitment was made by the U.K.’s
Ministry of Defense against the advice of officials from the U.K.
Foreign Office.
The
report further details that U.K. employees stationed in Saudi Arabia
are essentially gagged from reporting wrongdoing or war crimes. It
notes that U.K. workers who have sought to whistleblow on alleged
crimes have been routinely harassed and, in some cases, denied the
related protections ostensibly available to them under U.K.
employment and whistleblowing laws.
The
documents also show that the commitment was made by the U.K.’s
Ministry of Defense against the advice of officials from the U.K.
Foreign Office.
The
report further details that U.K. employees stationed in Saudi Arabia
are essentially gagged from reporting wrongdoing or war crimes. It
notes that U.K. workers who have sought to whistleblow on alleged
crimes have been routinely harassed and, in some cases, denied the
related protections ostensibly available to them under U.K.
employment and whistleblowing laws.
Maintaining
Government Blinders
In
addition, Lewis and Templar’s research revealed that the U.K.’s
policy aimed at avoiding the possible misuse of U.K.-supplied arms
has been circumvented. That policy, which normally involves the
case-by-case scrutiny of transfers of licensable military equipment
to Saudi Arabia, has been avoided in some notable cases by the use of
a “whitelist” system that allows the U.K. government to remain
conveniently ignorant of what types or quantities of military
equipment U.K. companies sell to the Saudis.
It
also prevents the U.K. government from knowing where that military
equipment ultimately ends up — which is particularly troubling,
given that the Saudi government has been known to
funnel weapons to
terrorist groups on
several occasions.
Another
related, and equally troubling, finding of the paper is that U.K.
citizens aiding the RSAF are still involved in the handling of
cluster munitions, which the Saudis continue
to use in
Yemen despite their use being banned by more than a hundred
countries. While BAE systems implemented a “pull-back” of its
employees from directly handling such munitions in 2008, reports from
technicians and aircraft armorers cited in the paper allege that this
“pull-back” was incomplete and that U.K. personnel are still
present – and participate – in their use.
Though
testimony proved this to be the case during the
2009-2010 Yemen conflict,
the lack of public knowledge of the practice makes it likely that it
has continued throughout the current Saudi-led bombing campaign in
Yemen. The use
of cluster munitions by
the Saudis has caused great suffering in Yemen, as they spread
ordnance over a wide area and pose a long-term danger to civilians
because many of them fail to detonate upon impact. In some cases,
Yemeni children have
discovered unexploded
cluster bombs and taken them home, mistaking them for harmless
objects only to have them detonate soon after.
Lucrative
Arms Sales vs. Humanitarian Responsibilities: No Contest
Further
information provided in the report suggests that the U.K. government
is deliberately avoiding its responsibility to report on possible
violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Though government
officials had argued before the U.K. High Court that the government’s
arms-export officials take IHL risk into consideration based on
information from Minister of Defense personnel, liaison officers and
BAE Systems employees, the report found that there is, in fact, no
Ministry of Defense guidance on possible IHL violations to U.K.
military officials or personnel involved in Saudi Arabia.
This,
combined with the “whitelist” system and BAE’s incomplete
“pull-back” of direct involvement in the use of deadly cluster
munitions, suggests that elements of the U.K. government have sought
to hide its involvement in the Saudi-led bombing campaign and its
associated war crimes in order to protect the U.K.’s lucrative arms
sales to the Saudi government.
The
U.K. government’s attempts to protect weapon sales to the Saudis
are unsurprising given the numerous ties that BAE Systems, which
holds a “near-monopoly
position”
in the U.K. defense industry, has to the U.K. political
establishment. Chief among these ties is BAE’s link to U.K. Prime
Minister Theresa May, whose husband and close political adviser,
Philip May, works for the Capital Group, BAE’s
largest shareholder and
thus the largest beneficiary of the company’s arms sales abroad.
Read
| UK
Personnel Supporting the Saudi Armed Forces — Risk, Knowledge and
Accountability
By Whitney
Webb / Creative
Commons / MintPress
News / Report
a typo
===================================
* Zie: ‘VS vecht in Jemen, Pentagon loog weer eens >> Congres eindelijk ‘wakker’‘
Zie ook: ‘Congres VS geeft akkoord voor verdere steun aan de Saoedische genocide in Jemen……‘
en: ‘Saoedi-Arabië vermoordde minstens 20 bruiloftsgangers in Jemen‘
en: ‘VS doet planning van de Saoedische genocide in Jemen…..‘
en: ‘Groot-Brittannië helpt Saoedi-Arabië met uitvoeren genocide in Jemen……‘
en: ‘Israël bezig met voorbereiding op meerdere fronten oorlog…….. (met hulp van de VS‘
en: ‘John Bolton heeft beloofd dat Iran voor 2019 onder een ander regime zal leven…….‘
en: ‘Jemen: BBC propaganda voor genocide door Saoedische coalitie……..‘
Voor nog meer berichten over de genocide in Jemen, klik op het betreffende label, direct onder dit bericht (na een aantal berichten krijg je een herhaling van het laatst gelezen bericht te zien, daar weer even op het betreffende label klikken en je krijgt de oudere berichten te zien >> het is mogelijk dat je dit nogmaals moet herhalen na opnieuw een aantal berichten)
