Category Archives: Ministry of Defence

Alleged breaches of international law by Saudi forces in Yemen exceed 500

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UK government figures revealed days after it justified resuming arms sales because incidents were isolated

The Ministry of Defence has revealed it has logged more than 500 Saudi air raids in possible breach of international law in Yemen, even though last week it justified resuming arms sales to Riyadh on the basis that only isolated incidents without any pattern have occurred.

The trade minister, Greg Hands, answering an urgent question in the Commons on last week’s resumption of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, refused to say how many bombing incidents had been reviewed by the UK before it agreed to grant UK arms export licences again.

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BAE Systems sold £15bn worth of arms to Saudis during Yemen assault

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Campaigners also allege latest export values imply UK arms sales greater than government’s declared figures

Britain’s leading arms manufacturer BAE Systems sold £15bn worth of arms and services to the Saudi military during the last five years, the period covered by Riyadh’s involvement in the deadly bombing campaign in the war in Yemen.

Figures taken from the company’s most recent annual report and newly analysed by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) reveal the British arms maker generated £2.5bn in revenues from the Saudi military during the whole of 2019.

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Bill sets five-year limit to prosecute UK armed forces who served abroad

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Legislation to stop ‘vexatious’ claims excludes alleged crimes by military personnel in Northern Ireland

A five-year time limit on bringing prosecutions against soldiers and veterans who have served abroad – except in “exceptional circumstances” – is to be imposed under legislation introduced by the government.

Clauses in the overseas operations (service personnel and veterans) bill would protect serving and former military personnel from what the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, claimed was a “vexatious” cycle of claims and re-investigations.

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UK’s air war against Isis ends after five years

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RAF has launched no attacks in Syria or Iraq since September, but controversy continues over civilian casuality numbers

Britain’s five-year air war against Isis has quietly come to an end, with official figures revealing no bombs have been dropped since September – yet the MoD still acknowledges only one civilian casualty in the entire conflict.

The data shows that over a period longer than the first world war, 4,215 bombs and missiles were launched from Reaper drones or RAF jets in Syria and Iraq, and a wide discrepancy has emerged between UK and US estimates of the number of civilians killed.

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‘People like you’ still uttered: BAME armed forces personnel on racism in services

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Concerns persist despite MoD initiatives to tackle racism, Guardian call-out shows

Serving soldiers from BAME backgrounds who spoke to the Guardian about their experience of the armed forces say the days of daily abuse and overt name-calling are gone, but instead it has been replaced with “subtle racism”.

“Comments such as ‘people like you’, ‘you people from the colonies,’ or ‘passport seeking’ are still uttered in plain hearing,” said one veteran serviceman, who described his experience over more than a decade in the ranks as “nothing but traumatic”.

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Racist incidents on rise in British army, warns ombudsman

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Nicola Williams urges MoD to do more to tackle ‘depressingly frequent’ racism

Incidents of racism in the armed forces are happening with “increasing and depressing frequency”, its official ombudsman has warned.

Nicola Williams, the service complaints ombudsman for the armed forces, called on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to do more to tackle racism among service personnel.

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Court ruling over tanks debt deals new blow to UK-Iran relations

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Judge finds in UK’s favour in dispute that has been linked to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case

The path to improved British-Iranian relations has hit a new barrier after the high court in London ruled that the UK does not have to pay at least £20m interest on the £387m it owes to Iran over the cancelled sale of Chieftain tanks in the 1970s.

The debt was seen by Boris Johnson when he was foreign secretary as critical to the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the Iranian-British dual national imprisoned in Tehran.

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British troops to join force countering Mali militants

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Defence minister agrees to help in one of most dangerous missions undertaken by the UN

British troops will be deployed in Mali next year to join in the world’s deadliest peacekeeping operation, the Ministry of Defence has announced.

The 250-strong force will provide a long-range reconnaissance capability for the United Nations deployment in the troubled African country which has struggled to decisively counter Islamic militants, armed separatists and traffickers.

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MoD criticised over £500m cost of storing obsolete submarines

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Failure puts UK’s reputation as responsible nuclear power at risk, auditors say

Storage of obsolete nuclear submarines has cost the UK taxpayer £500m because of “dismal” failings in the government’s nuclear decommissioning programme, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has found.

The Ministry of Defence has twice as many submarines in storage as it does in service and has not disposed of any of the 20 vessels decommissioned since 1980, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.

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MoD claim of one civilian death in Isis raids ridiculed

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RAF says 4,315 Isis fighters were killed or injured in airstrikes and just one civilian

The Ministry of Defence claim that the RAF killed only one civilian in thousands of airstrikes against Isis has been dismissed as ludicrous and “stretching credibility”.

According figures released by the MoD following a freedom of information request by the charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the RAF strikes between 2014 and January this year killed or injured 4,315 of the group’s fighters. It said 90% of those were killed.

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