Cameron - cheer-leader for Saudi Arabia

David Cameron has boasted of  the UK government’s role in selling equipment made by defence company BAE Systems to Saudi Arabia, Oman and other countries at almost the same time, the European parliament voted in favour of an EU-wide ban on arms being sold to Saudi Arabia in protest at its heavy aerial bombing of Yemen, which has been condemned by the UN.

Oliver Sprague, Amnesty International UK’s arms controls director, said: “The ‘brilliant things’ that David Cameron says BAE sells include massive amounts of weaponry for the Saudi Arabia military, despite Saudi Arabia’s dreadful record in Yemen. “Thousands of Yemeni civilians have been killed and injured in devastating and indiscriminate Saudi coalition airstrikes, and there’s strong evidence that further weapons sales to Saudi Arabia are not just ill-advised but actually illegal. Mr Cameron should stop acting as a cheerleader for BAE’s reckless arms sales and stop the flow of weapons to the Saudi war machine pending the outcome of both a UN inquiry into the bloody conflict in Yemen and the UK’s own review of its arms exports to Saudi Arabia.”