The UK initiated a secret deal with Saudi Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN human rights council, according to leaked diplomatic cables that have added to criticism of Britain’s relationship with the kingdom.
Classified Saudi memoranda released by WikiLeaks, and published in the Australian newspaper, suggest that in November 2013, British and Saudi diplomats agreed to support each other’s election to the UNHRC.
The UK and Saudi Arabia were subsequently elected to the 47-member council for three-year terms running until the end of 2016.
Established in 2006, the UNHRC ostensibly upholds human rights across the world and excludes human rights violators from its membership. But Saudi Arabia is viewed by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as one of the world’s worst offenders of human rights.
The kingdom executed more prisoners in 2014 than any country other than Iran and China, according to Amnesty, which accuses Saudi Arabia of torturing political opponents and suppressing women’s rights.
According to a translation by UN Watch, a non-governmental organisation, one Saudi cable read that: “The [Saudi UN] delegation is honoured to send to the ministry the enclosed memorandum, which the delegation has received from the permanent mission of the United Kingdom asking it for the support and backing of the candidacy of their country to the membership of the human rights council (HRC) for the period 2014-2016, in the elections that will take place in 2013 in the city of New York.”
“The ministry might find it an opportunity to exchange support with the United Kingdom, where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would support the candidacy of the United Kingdom to the membership of the council for the period 2014-2015 in exchange for the support of the United Kingdom to the candidacy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
A spokesperson for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office said: “As is standard practice with all members, we never reveal our voting intentions or the way we vote.” “The British Government strongly promotes human rights around the world and we raise our human rights concerns with the Saudi Arabian authorities.”
The Saudi Arabian Embassy in London did not answer phone calls seeking a response to the allegations. Saudi Arabia was the UK’s biggest export market for arms sales last year, according to data collated by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), a London-based non-governmental organisation. It estimates that arms export licences to the kingdom under the coalition government of 2010-2015 totalled nearly £4bn.
The UK was the largest supplier of arms to Saudi Arabia between 2010 and 2014, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Last month it was revealed that Faisal bin Hassan Trad, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador at the UN in Geneva, had been elected to a senior panel of human rights “experts” at the UN, drawing further criticism from charities.
In his speech to the Labour conference on Tuesday, Jeremy Corbyn said his first message to David Cameron was to ask him to “intervene now personally with the Saudi Arabian regime to stop the beheading and crucifixion of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr”, an activist arrested in 2011 at the age of 17 and subsequently sentenced to death for his part in anti-government protests. Mr Corbyn also called on the prime minister to cancel any Ministry of Justice contracts with Saudi prisons.
Michael Gove, the justice secretary, said last month that he would wind down Justice Solutions International, the commercial arm of his department, but that a “training” contract with the Saudis would be completed so as to avoid a financial penalty from early cancellation.
In July, the UK government won a legal battle to keep secret the details of how it oversaw a contract to supply the Saudi Arabian national guard, a deal that allegedly involved corrupt payments.
A freedom of information tribunal sided with the Ministry of Defence, which had argued that publishing the details sought by Private Eye magazine would have endangered its access to Saudi intelligence on terrorist plots.