UK faces court over arms sales to Indonesia, Israel

UK faces court over arms sales to Indonesia, Israel

Richard Norton-Taylor and John Aglionby, Deutsche Presse-Agentur,
London/Singapore

The legality of Britain's arms sales to Israel and Indonesia is
to be challenged in the courts on the grounds that they breach
stated government policy, The Guardian has learned.

Bringing an unprecedented action, lawyers for human rights
groups will tell the high court that the sales violate the
government's criteria for export licenses.

They argue that the assurances of the Indonesian authorities
that the arms would not be used for internal repression, and by
Israel that they would not be used in the Occupied Territories,
have proved hollow.

When the case against Indonesia was announced on Wednesday,
human rights day, Amnesty International and Oxfam will challenge
the UK government to sign a proposed arms-trade treaty which
would outlaw the export of weapons likely to be used in
"violations of international human rights or humanitarian law".

Britain's "consolidated criteria" -- in effect binding
secondary legislation incorporating both UK and EU policy -- say
that an export license will not be issued if there is a clear
risk that the proposed export may be used for internal repression
or international aggression, or may threaten regional stability.

A case against the UK's Department of Trade and Industry and
its Foreign Office is being brought by an Indonesian, Aguswandi,
who is associated with his country's human rights organization,
Tapol.

"The British government has failed to admit that British
weapons were being used in Aceh and is ignoring human rights
violations," he said on Tuesday. He said British Hawk jets and
Scorpion light tanks had been seen in Aceh province, where rebel
forces are fighting for independence.

His lawyer, Jamie Beagent, whose firm is also preparing the
case against Israel, said the risk of use for internal
repression, mentioned in the criteria, was "patent".

The Guardian revealed last week that figures given to Menzies
Campbell, the UK Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman,
showed that this year the government has approved export licenses
for broad categories of arms, including machine guns, rockets and
missiles, for Indonesia.

After foreign observers were refused access to Aceh, the UK
government told MPs last month that it "remained concerned about
the situation" there.

The UK Foreign Office says in its latest human rights report
that although the professionalism of the Indonesian security
forces has improved, "serious problems remain, with allegations
of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, arbitrary detention,
rape, torture and mistreatment of prisoners".

In the latest operation to crush the Free Aceh Movement (GAM)
in Sumatra, 40,000 heavily armed soldiers have pushed the rebels
into the jungle-covered hills.

The death toll, officially put at about 1,600 since President
Megawati Soekarnoputri declared martial law in May, is impossible
to assess because there is a de facto ban on foreign media and
local journalists are strongly intimidated into what the military
describes as "patriotic" reporting.

Official figures show that a large quantity of arms and
internal security equipment is being sold to Israel, despite
London's public criticism of the country's human rights record
and growing violence.

Amnesty and Oxfam say that Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Macedonia,
Costa Rica, Finland and the Netherlands have pledged support for
an international arms trade treaty which is backed by the UK
Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy.