LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st October, 2018) The United Kingdom should "take the moral high ground" and reconsider its alliance with Saudi Arabia amid the Khashoggi case and the war in Yemen, otherwise it risks facing bigger backlash than that the one provoked by the 2003 Iraq invasion, Kim Sharif, the head of Human Rights for Yemen group, told Sputnik.
The statement comes as UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is set to face questions from the parliament's Foreign Affairs select committee on Wednesday over the UK support for Saudi military operations in Yemen. The meeting is accompanied by the heightened public debate over UK arms sales to Riyadh following the murder of Saudi opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate.
"It has to change [policy] because the UK has a lot to lose if it doesn't change course. It has to be seen to be taking the moral high ground. As much as some might criticize our government, at the end of the day they look to the UK to exercise judgment and be logical and look after its own interests as well," Sharif said.
Sharif expressed an opinion that London's inaction in connection with the Khashoggi murder and Riyadh's role in the Yemen conflict could be even more costly than the 2003 Iraq War, which dealt a powerful blow to the UK reputation.
"The [2003] Iraq mess didn't help us and now the situation is just much worse. So in terms of long-term interests it's not actually clever for [the UK] to be allied [with Riyadh], because the people are infuriated ... The entire Muslim world is now looking at the Saudi regime as the most evil thing that's ever happened to humanity. There's a lot of upset and anger," she pointed out.
Commenting on the Khashoggi case, Sharif doubted that anything had ever been done in Saudi Arabia without consent of the king, thereby questioning the account that the murder of the opposition journalist was a rogue operation by Saudi operatives.
"Everybody knows, and I have personal knowledge and experience ... no one can do anything in Saudi Arabia without the king's knowledge and say so, especially on serious matters such as the Khashoggi arrest. But they didn't come to arrest him. They came to murder him and to make an example of his body to terrorist people into silence about the crimes of these people," Sharif opined.
She finally recalled that the Khashoggi case came after nearly four years of Saudi Arabia's military campaign in Yemen, and the international community's failure to stop Riyadh.
"But they get away with so much blue murder, for nearly four years especially in relation to Yemen. Nobody is there to indicate them, so they now think they are above the law, above humanity and above everything," Sharif added.
According to the information provided by the UK Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), London has licensed arms worth almost 5 billion Pounds ($6.6 billion) to Saudi Arabia since March 2015. Multiple rights groups have repeatedly criticized the United Kingdom and other Western nations for delivering arms to Riyadh, stressing that it made them complicit in crimes and what was dubbed by the United Nations as the "world's worst humanitarian crisis" in Yemen.
The debate around arms sales risks deteriorating significantly amid the Khashoggi's death at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, and Germany's calls on other countries to halt weapons supplies to Riyadh.
Following more than two weeks of denials, Saudi Arabia admitted on October 19 that Washington Post columnist Khashoggi, last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, had been killed in a brawl inside the diplomatic mission. According to Riyadh, 18 people have been arrested over their suspected involvement in the incident. On Thursday, the Saudi prosecutor general acknowledged that the journalist's murder had been orchestrated in advance. However, Riyadh maintains that the murder had nothing to do with the Saudi Royal family, describing it as a rogue operation.
