Category: Samuel Perlo Freeman

The UK arms trade in 2025 – controversies and challenges

1/16/2025

This blog post is one in a series looking at an array of issues in 2025 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, often offering recommendations.

Sam Perlo-Freeman

The UK is one of the world’s largest arms exporters – exactly where in the rankings depends on which figures you look at. The UK is only 7th according to SIPRI data on major conventional weapons exports, but in financial terms, the UK is probably somewhere between 2nd and 4th alongside France and Russia. At any rate, an important player.

By far the most controversial, though certainly not the largest, aspect of the UK arms trade at present is its arms sales to Israel, most of which go indirectly via the US, especially components for the F-35 combat aircraft, which Israel is using in Gaza, and of which 15% by value is made in the UK. Last September, the new Labour government suspended certain licences for use by the Israeli military, having concluded that Israel was not adhering to international law in Gaza, but made a special ‘carve-out’ from its own export licensing criteria to allow the continued indirect supply of F-35 components via the US and other partner nations. The government claimed that such indirect supplies could not be stopped without jeopardising the whole F-35 supply chain. This decision faces a legal challenge brought by Palestinian NGO Al-Haq and activist legal group GLAN, and will likely be heard in spring. The latest government submission to the court makes clear that there is no new evidence of Israeli violations in Gaza that would lead the government to change this position, an extraordinary admission, placing the UK’s international commitments under the ATT, IHL, and even the Genocide Convention as lower priority than maintaining the F-35 supply chain.

However, while the F-35 and arms sales to Israel are rightly the focus of most current attention, of far greater significance for the UK arms industry – and also raising serious questions regarding human rights, peace, and security – are prospects for sales of the Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft, jointly produced by BAE in the UK, Leonardo in Italy, and Airbus in Germany and Spain.

Last year, trade unions warned that production of the Typhoon at their plant in Warton, Lancashire, may end before long if there are not significant new orders, creating a gap before full-scale production of the planned 6th-generation Tempest fighter gets under way. New orders from Germany, Italy, and Spain have helped alleviate these concerns, although this will not involve final assembly in the UK. Nonetheless, both the UK government and BAE are actively pursuing export customers as well, from their traditional customer base in the Middle East - in particular, Qatar, Türkiye, and Saudi Arabia.

Qatar ordered 24 Typhoons in 2018, the last of which should be delivered in 2025, and has reportedly recently agreed to buy 12 more, although a contract has not yet been signed. It is unclear exactly what Qatar would want them for, given that it also has fleets of French Rafales and US F-15s, faces no external threats, and may lack the capacity to operate that many aircraft, is a good question. Qatar is rated by Transparency International Defence & Security as having a ‘critical’ risk of corruption in arms procurement, and given BAE’s grimy record in this area, this deal should face stringent due diligence in relation to corruption, including via possible offset deals.

Türkiye has long been seeking to modernise its combat aircraft fleet, especially since Greece recently acquired Rafales from France. Türkiye was kicked out of the F-35 programme by the US in 2019 for buying Russian air defence systems. It is now acquiring 40 F-16s instead, but is also very interested in acquiring up to 40 Eurofighters. For a long time, Germany was blocking this due to Türkiye’s human rights record and role in Syria, but has lifted this objection, and negotiations for a deal have begun.

However, the Turkish state remains highly authoritarian and repressive, especially towards its Kurdish minority. It remains in occupation of parts of north-east Syria, where it and its militia allies have been accused of serious abuses. Türkiye has continued a steady bombing campaign against Kurdish groups in both Iraq and Syria, causing high civilian casualties. Moreover, following the regime change in Syria, Türkiye may well be looking to pursue further military action against the Kurdish autonomous region of Rojava in the north-east, and indeed its allied militias have already launched attacks. The risk therefore that Eurofighters sold to Türkiye might be used in these conflicts is high.

Saudi Arabia is reportedly considering various options for increasing its combat aircraft fleet, including the Eurofighter, the Rafale, and the F-15, and most recently the Turkish domestically-produced Kaan stealth fighter currently under development. During the war in Yemen, German objections would have stopped any new sales of Eurofighters (though Germany allowed continuing supplies of spare parts for the existing Saudi fleet), but as with Türkiye, they have now lifted these objections as the truce in Yemen in place since April 2022 continues to hold.

However, the truce remains fragile, with numerous violations, and the conflict in Yemen remains far from solved. Saudi Arabia’s horrific human rights record has if anything worsened, with the country carrying out a record 345 executions in 2024. The record of corruption in UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia is also egregious.

In short, all 3 potential Middle Eastern customers for the Eurofighters raise serious red flags, although none of these will likely be of the slightest concern to the UK government, desperate as it will be to maintain the BAE production line until Tempest gets off the ground. If all goes their way, 2025 could be a bumper year for BAE, and in any event it will be a busy year for those of us seeking to advocate for ethical restraint in arms exports.

Sam Perlo-Freeman is Research Coordinator at Campaign Against Arms Trade in the UK.

Inclusion on the Forum on the Arms Trade expert list and the publication of these posts does not indicate agreement with or endorsement of the opinions of others. The opinions expressed are the views of each post's author(s).

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Judicial Review redux in the UK over sales to Saudi Arabia and Coalition

1/6/2021

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This is the third blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2021 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

Sam Perlo-Freeman

It seems like we’ve been here before. This year, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) hopes to take the UK Government to court, seeking a Judicial Review over its decision last July to continue arms sales to Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies in the war in Yemen, in spite of the devastating human toll exacted by that conflict, and the overwhelming evidence of gross and repeated violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) by the Coalition.

Didn’t CAAT just win a case like this a year or so ago? Yes, indeed.

The story so far: In June 2019, the Court of Appeal, overturning a previous High Court decision, ruled that the process by which the government made decisions on export licences to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen was “irrational and unlawful”. Specifically, Criterion 2c of the government’s Consolidated Criteria on arms exports states that an export licence shall be refused if there is a “clear risk” that the equipment “might be used” for serious violations of IHL. Yet, the government had not even attempted an assessment of past patterns of violations of IHL by Saudi Arabia and the Coalition. Instead, it had relied on its ongoing engagement with and training of the Saudi government and military to conclude there was no “clear risk”.

The Court of Appeal rejected this absurd position, that a previous record of violations was irrelevant to an assessment of future risk, and the government had to stop issuing new licences to Coalition states for possible use in Yemen, and to retake all past licencing decisions on a lawful basis. (However, existing licences, including indefinite Open General licences, were not cancelled, allowing BAE Systems’ extensive support for the Saudi Air Force to continue unabated).

A year later, in July 2020, the government announced that it had completed its review, and concluded that all was well, there were only a “small number” of possible violations of IHL among all the hundreds of incidents assessed, and that these were “isolated incidents” that did not constitute any “pattern”. Therefore, there was indeed no “clear risk” of future violations, and that arms sales could continue without any concern for the potential civilian toll this might exact.

It is this latest decision that CAAT is challenging. The idea that there have only been a “small number” of violations of IHL flies in the face of a huge body of evidence from UN experts and Yemeni and international NGOs. These organisations have used highly rigorous methodologies and sources, and have access to on-the-ground witnesses, which the UK government does not. The evidence includes repeated bombings of residential areas, schools, hospitals, market places, agricultural targets, and many others, usually with no evidence of any nearby military target . According to the Yemen Data Project, almost a third of the thousands of Coalition air strikes since the bombing began in 2015 have struck civilian targets. The “patterns” of violations are plain to see.

The government have provided only the barest outline of how they have reached these, on the face of it, absurd conclusions. They have not said what constitutes a “small number” of cases, or what they mean by a “pattern”, only that the incidents occurred “...at different times, in different circumstances and for different reasons”.

The next stage of this saga – which started with CAAT’s initial application to the High Court in 2016 – is for CAAT to seek permission for a new Judicial Review - “JR2” - of the government’s review of licencing in response to CAAT’s victory in the original Judicial Review. This starts again with the High Court, and could yet go all the way to the Supreme Court. (For those not familiar with the UK court hierarchy, check this). While the full Grounds of CAAT’s application are subject to legal confidentiality, the basic premises are straightforward:

1) We challenge the conclusion that there are only a “small number” of cases of violations of IHL, based on the huge volume of evidence above.

2) We likewise challenge the conclusion that there is no “pattern” of violations.

3) We argue that, even if there were no “pattern”, this would not be sufficient to conclude that there is no clear risk of future violations. Even a single incident could constitute a serious violation of IHL, and there can very well be a risk of further “isolated” incidents even so.

Since we know so little about the government’s methodology, or even the details of their conclusions, which they say must be kept secret for reasons of national security, we have no idea what evidence the government may or may not have to support its conclusions. If we are granted permission for JR2, most of this evidence will have to be heard in Closed session, where CAAT will be represented by security-cleared Special Advocates, who cannot disclose the content of the sessions to CAAT or our regular lawyers.

We do not know, therefore, what secret evidence the government might bring to these closed sessions in an attempt to justify their conclusions. But we find it hard to believe that there is anything that could reasonably gainsay the vast weight of evidence from so many credible and respected sources.

The way it appears to us is that, whatever the evidence, and whatever courts have said about previous decision-making processes, the government is determined to find a way to interpret things that allow them to maintain its relationship with the UK’s overwhelmingly largest arms customer, Saudi Arabia, whatever mental and legal gymnastics this may require.

We hope that the courts will exhibit similar scepticism. The government must respond to our Grounds for Judicial Review by January 22nd, after which the High Court will decide if, on the basis of these submissions, we have a case. If not, we may still seek a hearing to decide if the case may proceed. If JR2 does get the go-ahead, it will be months yet before it comes to court.

The case, as they say, continues.

Sam Perlo-Freeman is Research Coordinator at the Campaign Against Arms Trade.

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Looking ahead – the arms trade on trial in the UK and The Hague

1/6/2020

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This is the fourth blog post in a series looking at an array of issues in 2020 related to weapons use, the arms trade and security assistance, at times offering recommendations.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of Campaign Against Arms Trade.

Samuel Perlo-Freeman

Last year, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) won a legal victory against the UK Government in the Court of Appeal, which overruled a previous High Court judgment, and declared the government’s approach to evaluating export licenses for arms sales to Saudi Arabia to be “irrational and therefore unlawful.”

Criterion 2(c) of the EU Common Position on arms exports, which is also written into UK law (and therefore will likely remain after Brexit), states that an export license for military equipment shall not be issued if there is a “clear risk” that the equipment might be used to commit serious violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). CAAT had challenged the government’s continuing approval of export licenses for combat aircraft, bombs, missiles, and other equipment used in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, on the basis of the multiple, repeated attacks by the Saudi-led Coalition on civilians and civilian objects, documented by the UN and numerous NGOs with on-the-ground information, which CAAT’s lawyers argued surely meant a clear risk existed of further violations using UK weapons. The Government had argued that their close relationship with the Saudis, their knowledge of Saudi targeting procedures, and the training they provided, ensured that no clear risk existed; indeed, they had not made any assessment of the many hundreds of incidents of attacks on civilian targets of which they had been made aware, to decide if any of these were likely to be violations of IHL.

The judges ruled that any rational assessment of future risk must include as a crucial piece of evidence an assessment of past record. They ruled that the government must retake all extant export licensing decisions for equipment to the Saudi coalition, based on a lawful procedure. Until this review is complete, the government has agreed not to issue any new licenses for equipment that could be used in Yemen. The government has been granted leave to appeal to the UK Supreme Court, but has not been granted a stay of the judgment pending this.

There are therefore two major developments in this case to be anticipated in 2020: the Supreme Court hearing and judgment, and the results of the government’s retaking of export licensing decisions.

How the Supreme Court will view this case it would be pointless to speculate. As for the review of licensing, there are many possible outcomes, each of which might lead to different courses of action for those seeking to stop arms sales from fueling the Yemen war, and other conflicts worldwide. Some that come to mind include:

The review could find that there has indeed been a pattern of violations of IHL by the Saudi-led coalition that means that there is a clear risk of future violations, resulting in the revoking of licenses for most or all equipment supporting the Coalition’s air war, and a future presumption of denial. This would be both fantastic and unexpected, and seems highly unlikely – much of the UK arms industry, BAE Systems in particular, is heavily dependent on exports to Saudi, and the government is unlikely to be willing to see this business terminated, including the huge servicing contracts BAE has with Saudi Arabia, supported by 6,300 employees in the Kingdom. BAE has received £29 billion in revenue from the Saudi Ministry of Defence (MOD) between 2009 and 2018 from sales and services, and the loss of this would be devastating to the UK’s “national champion,” whose interests carry huge weight in government policy-making.
The review could conclude that there is no clear evidence of serious violations of IHL by the Coalition, and hence no clear risk of future violations, and thus continue to approve all licenses. This is certainly a possible outcome that would allow the government to achieve its objectives, but might be seen as too lacking in credibility to sustain, in particular in the face of potential future challenges.
The review could find evidence of some violations of IHL, but conclude that this does not amount to a recurring pattern, so that there is still no clear risk, allowing most or all licenses to continue as before.
The review could conclude that there has indeed been a pattern of serious violations of IHL, and that some previous licenses should not have been issued, leading to some being revoked; but that subsequent changes in Saudi policy, working with the UK government, combined with the lowering in the tempo of the air war that has been observed over 2019, means that there is no clear future risk, so that new licenses can be issued, subject to continual careful monitoring of Coalition actions.

In the event of any outcome other than a complete halt to arms sales for use in the Yemen war, CAAT and other interested parties will need to look carefully at the basis on which the conclusions were reached – in so far as it is possible to know them – and consider whether there might be grounds for further challenge. On the other hand, any outcome that concludes that previous licenses should not have been granted, on the basis of the record of IHL violations (such as 4), could open the way to looking more closely at other cases where the UK has issued licenses for arms sales to conflict parties; for example, to Turkey during their conflicts with Kurdish forces in Turkey and Syria (though the issuing of new licenses to Turkey are currently suspended), or even to the US for components and subsystems used in their many ongoing wars around the world, including drone wars, where their observance of IHL is open to severe doubt.

Meanwhile, another legal effort to hold both governments and arms companies to account is under way in the Hague: on December 11, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), in collaboration with Mwatana for Human Rights in Yemen, CAAT, Amnesty International, Centre Delás in Spain, and Rete Disarmo in Italy, submitted a 350-page Communication to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) at the International Criminal Court, asking the OTP to investigate both senior government officials in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and senior corporate officers of nine companies headquartered in these countries, for their potential criminal responsibility for aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen through the supply of arms. This is a unique effort up to now, in seeking to establish the liability of corporate actors for their role in supporting war crimes through the supply of arms. The Communication challenges companies’ defense that they only supply arms where they have an export license on numerous grounds: for one thing, international principles on business and human rights expect companies to go beyond the minimum requirements of national legislation in seeking to prevent their business activities from having negative impacts on human rights, and this should be even more so in the case of the arms industry, whose products are designed to kill. Secondly, the granting of an export license does not entail an obligation to export, so that the company cannot evade responsibility to conduct their own due diligence; moreover, an export license may be valid for years, so that the situation at the point of delivery may not be the same as at the time the license was issued.

The file is now with the OTP. ECCHR and their partners hope that they will at the very least give the case serious consideration, and that this may even lead to the opening of a Preliminary Examination in 2020.

The road to any prosecutions would be a long one; however, so long as this file remains open, it may be hoped that the potential for personal criminal liability may have a cautionary effect on decision-makers in evaluating export decisions, whether from the government or corporate side, encouraging more rigorous scrutiny of whether there is indeed a “clear risk” of equipment being used for war crimes or other serious violations of IHL.

However, returning to the UK, there is one dark cloud on the horizon regarding CAAT’s efforts to hold the government’s export licensing policy to account through the courts. The Conservative Party manifesto for the election that returned the party and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to power for the next five years included a paragraph that has alarmed civil society and others concerned with the rule of law, promising to review the whole nature of the relationship between government and the judiciary, including restricting the possibility of seeking judicial review; this will still be possible for individuals whose rights are trampled by an “overbearing state,” but not as a way of “conducting politics by other means.” This is probably primarily aimed at the sort of case that saw Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament struck down in a scathing ruling by the Supreme Court in September, but may well also target cases such as CAAT’s.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in the Canadian province of Ontario, right-wing Conservative Premier Doug Ford passed a similar law in 2019, the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act, severely restricting the ability of Ontarians to sue the Provincial Government. Moreover, the law applies retroactively, and on the basis of this, the Ontario government is seeking to have eight previous class action suits against it – which the government had already lost, through all stages of appeal – thrown out. Given the Johnson government’s track record in terms of its respect for the rule of law (or lack thereof), it is not hard to imagine them pursuing a similar course in the UK, in spite of its flagrant violation of constitutional norms.

Could the UK government, if it loses in the Supreme Court, still try to have the case canceled by such means, and allow arms sales to Saudi Arabia to continue even after they have been shown to violate the UK’s arms export laws? We can only hope not, but it is not something that can be ruled out.

Sam Perlo-Freeman is research coordinator for the Campaign Against Arms Trade.

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The UK arms trade in 2025 – controversies and challenges

Judicial Review redux in the UK over sales to Saudi Arabia and Coalition

Looking ahead – the arms trade on trial in the UK and The Hague

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