Some of the most senior figures in the British establishment have secretly served as ‘privy councillors’ to a highly repressive dictatorship in the Gulf state of Oman. The elite UK group has included heads of MI6 and the military, a foreign minister, an oil executive, the ex-governor of the Bank of England and one of Queen Elizabeth’s closest aides.
The scale of British arms sales to Riyadh rises again amid secrecy over a meeting between BAE and trade minister Liam Fox after the Khashoggi killing. Documents show both the UK trade ministry and BAE sought to keep arming Saudi Arabia in the immediate wake of the dissident’s murder.
Five highly repressive Gulf states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — have been able to invest at least £140bn in Britain. The figure is more than five times larger than Russian investments in the UK, which have, by contrast, received sustained criticism in the media and government.
Journalist Jamal Khashoggi criticised the Saudi regime for its ‘cruel war’ in Yemen and weeks later it murdered him, sparking an international outcry. But while his fiancée frantically searched for his body, Britain’s military quietly sold spare parts to Saudi Arabia’s air force, so it could keep bombing Yemen. And that arms deal is just one in a series of controversial weapons exports uncovered by Declassified UK.
Seven members of Britain’s armed forces won an award for their ‘vital operational’ work supporting the US military after it killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike last year, Declassified has found.
The CIA believes Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, or ‘MBS’, orchestrated the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. What can Britain, which routinely condemns human rights abuses by enemies, do to stop one of its closest allies?
Britain’s top military officer in the Middle East said leaders of a Gulf state are offering their young people a ‘hugely exciting future’ – days after the country’s unelected prime minister was accused of holding his daughters hostage, Declassified has found.
As new evidence emerges of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed holding his adult daughters ‘hostage’, Declassified has found that Queen Elizabeth has met the repressive leader on at least 10 occasions since the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’.
The queen’s second son has held 70 meetings with repressive Middle East monarchies in the decade since the Arab Spring uprisings. Most meetings took place after Prince Andrew’s role as official trade envoy ended in 2011 amid the Epstein scandal, with UK diplomatic support for his Gulf trips lasting into 2019.
The heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, has held 95 meetings with eight repressive monarchies in the Middle East since the ‘Arab Spring’ protests of 2011 threatened their power. Charles has played a key role in promoting £14.5-billion worth of UK arms exports to these regimes in the last decade.