Chairman of Saudi Arabia's top arms supplier BAE Systems criticises Riyadh over Khashoggi, Yemen

From the murder of Jamal Khashoggi to its handling of the war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia's recent scandals have prompted even its biggest suppliers of arms to criticise its policies.

On Saturday, the chairman of BAE Systems Roger Carr told Sky News the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and Yemen’s war have greatly damaged Saudi Arabia’s reputation. 

Carr also told the British broadcaster that Britain should be a “critical friend” of the kingdom.

“Saudi Arabia was a country that was developing very well under new leadership - a sense of liberalisation, opening up the country, opening up to opportunities for women. All these things were being very well received,” Carr claimed to Sky News.

“Two issues damaged the position of Saudi Arabia in eyes of the world - the Khashoggi affair is one of them and also the war in Yemen.”

“On Khashoggi, we have seen that politicians have admonished Saudi Arabia. Politicians didn’t believe the way that was done and handled was appropriate or acceptable and that’s exactly right,” he said.

“What we want to see, by being a consistent and critical friend, is that Saudi Arabia, needs to return to the pathway it was on and develop in the way it was.”

In a case that shocked the world, Khashoggi, a US resident and Riyadh critic who wrote for the Washington Post, was murdered and his corpse dismembered inside the kingdom's diplomatic compound in Istanbul on 2 October.

But BAE arms sales to the kingdom, which includes Typhoon fighter jets, have prompted widespread criticism and accusations of complicity in the devastation in Yemen, much of which is caused by often-indiscriminate Saudi air strikes.

Amnesty International previously said UK arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen made a "mockery" of global arms treaties and has resulted in "enormous harm" to civilians while other right groups have urged the UK and other European states to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia leads a pro-government military alliance that has battled Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels since 2015, pushing the impoverished country to the brink of famine.

The UN categorises Yemen as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Earlier this year, it emerged that British councils invested half-a-billion pounds in arms companies implicated in the war on Yemen. The local authorities' pension funds held sizeable shares - worth £566 million - in arms companies including BAE Systems, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, according to British media reports.

"British council workers' retirement income is being funded by companies that have been allowed by the British and American governments to make much of their profits by satisfying the appetite of Saudi to kill, maim and starve millions of civilians in Yemen," MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle said.

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