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UK Omits Saudi from Death Penalty Strategy ’to Safeguard Defense Contracts’

UK Omits Saudi from Death Penalty Strategy ’to Safeguard Defense Contracts’
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The British Government left Saudi Arabia off a list of thirty countries to be challenged by diplomats over their continued use of the death penalty despite executing over 90 people every single year.

UK Omits Saudi from Death Penalty Strategy ’to Safeguard Defense Contracts’

The Saudi Kingdom was the only major death penalty state to be omitted from a 20-page Foreign Office document setting out the UK's five-year strategy to reduce the use of executions around the world.

Among the countries given a greater priority were Barbados, Singapore and Jordan that between them passed less than ten death sentences in 2014.

However, human rights groups and opposition politicians expressed concern that ministers left the notoriously sensitive Saudi regime off the list to safeguard billions of pounds of defense contracts and security co-operation.

For his part, the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said the time had come to "shine a light" into the "shady corners" of the UK relationship with the Saudi regime.

Only the Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood expressed "disappointment" at the 47 executions carried out by Saudi Arabia at the end of last week.

The UK strategy, which was written in 2011, set out what it describes as a list of "priority countries" where British diplomats would be "encouraged" to "proactively drive forward" and "make progress" towards the UK's ultimate goal of abolishing the death penalty over five years.

Among the countries listed in the strategy were China, Iran, Belarus, the US and the Caribbean as they are places where "most effort should be focused." Yet the strategy went on to list another 25 countries that were "identified where posts should also be working towards "reducing the use of the death penalty."

On the contrary, Saudi Arabia did not appear on either list despite having one of the worst human rights records in the Middle East.

For his part, Amnesty International's Head of Policy Allan Hogarth said the omission was "astonishing."
"We've become increasingly alarmed that the UK government has been bending over backwards to avoid criticizing Saudi Arabia's appalling human rights record," he added.

In parallel, Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats noted that: "Saudi Arabia is a barbaric regime and the UK government must do more to stand up to them. The Government must not just write reports and accidentally miss them out due to worrying about diplomatic nicety, it should hold them to account."

Ironically, a Saudi Justice Ministry spokesman claimed: "As a judicial power or judicial branch, we execute, or we apply, Sharia law according to the facts we see in front of us, irrespective of other influences, and that is what the judges are qualified on. They don't look to any other influences, they deal with the facts that they see in front of them."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

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