Human Rights Watch calls for US to hold Saudi Arabia accountable ...

Human Rights Watch in a piece for Newsweek called for the US to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for human rights abuses on Monday, as the US reportedly prepares to lift its ban on the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia.

The weapons ban, which was imposed by the US in February of 2021 responded to Saudi Arabia’s alleged war crimes in Yemen and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives in 2018. According to a US intelligence report, the killing of Jamal Khashoggi was at the direction of Saudi crown prince and ruler, Mohammed bin Salman.

Human Rights Watch also reported in August 2023, that Saudi border guards committed widespread and systematic killings of Ethiopian migrants at the Yemen-Saudi border through the use of explosive weaponry and shooting at close range—in some instances asking survivors which limb they preferred to be shot first. According to the report, an estimated 90 percent of migrants along the dangerous “Eastern Route”— from the Horn of Africa, across the Gulf of Aden, through Yemen into Saudi Arabia—are Ethiopians migrating for economic reasons or fleeing due to serious human rights abuses by the Ethiopian government.

Less than a year after Human Rights Watch published these findings and three years after the initial ban was imposed, the US is expected to resume its weapons trading with Saudi Arabia, traditionally one of the biggest buyers of US weaponry, the Financial Times reported.

In response, Human Rights Watch has called for the US to maintain its ban on offensive weaponry until Saudi Arabia ends their human rights abuses, stating that:

As news that Saudi Arabia and the US are nearing agreement on a new mutual defense pact, concern and alarm for grave crimes committed by the Saudis appears long forgotten. Without accountability these crimes will continue. With a new defense pact and the intention of lifting the ban on the sale of offensive weapons, the Biden administration sends the message that heinous crimes can be committed, even rewarded, for political expediency.