UK ministers facing war-crime prosecution over arms supplies to Israel

Alameen Templeton
Evidence is emerging in the wake of the UK government’s decision to restrict its arms supplies to Israel’s genocide that Rishi Sunak’s administration covered up evidence of its atrocities for months.
Tens of thousands more Gazans have been murdered since the evidence was first covered up in February and human rights lawyers now gathering evidence with a view to prosecuting UK politicians and officials with war crimes.
Some activists believe Kier Starmer’s Labour government also needs to be investigated as it is clearly dragging its feet and obstructing a full weapons ban that many say is required to cut British complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Foreign minister David Lammy’s announcement Monday of a freeze on 30 arms export licences still leaves 320 licences authorising an unrestricted flow of death to Tel Aviv.
‘A clear risk of war crimes’
Lammy made no attempt to hide his reluctance to allow Monday’s wrist slap to mass murder, saying: “I have made this decision with regret … it is in sorrow, not in anger.”
He said the contracts were frozen due to a “clear risk that they might be used to commit” war crimes.
That is an admission, which once made, imposes an immediate obligation on London to stop all weapon supplies to Israel, activists argue.
“The clear risk that Lammy speaks of existed in stark clarity long before he made a reluctant confession in Parliament. Labour’s obvious foot dragging in imposing sanctions merely opens the door to sharing complicity in genocide with the Conservatives,” said a prominent attorney, who did not wish to be identified as he is participating in legal proceedings.
Lammy appeared to defend the Conservatives’ record, saying Monday: “Both my predecessor and all our major allies have repeatedly and forcefully raised these concerns with the Israeli government … Regrettably, they have not been addressed satisfactorily”.
The chief suspects for prosecution under humanitarian law so far are former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his foreign minister David Cameron, as well as Conservative big wigs James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch, enabled Israel’s atrocities.
‘Most likely to kill’
Adding fuel to the fire is mounting evidence Cameron, “sat on advice” he received in January that Israel’s actions in Gaza were breaching international humanitarian law (IHL), Declassified UK reports Friday.
In January, Sunak’s administration flagged 28 “high-risk” licences with Israel as “most likely to be used by the IDF in offensive operations in Gaza” – a number strikingly similar to the 30 Lammy suspended Monday.
Yet Lammy only made the 30 suspensions after an agonising review – which is still ongoing – of the UK’s weapon contracts with Israel to differentiate lethal from non-lethal weapons even though the information was already at his disposal.
Declassfied UK notes senior Conservative MP, Alicia Kearns, was secretly recorded in March telling a Tory fundraiser that the Foreign Office’s legal advice “would mean the UK has to cease all arms sales to Israel without delay”.
It says: “A Foreign Office source has now come forward to expose how Cameron was in receipt of ‘similar’ legal advice to that currently being used by Lammy ‘from at least February onwards.
“‘The advice being sent through to the Foreign Office was clear that the breaches of IHL by Israel as the occupying power were so obvious that there was a danger of UK complicity if the licences were not withdrawn.’”.
“The tragedy has to be considered: how many lives might have been saved if the arms export licences had been stopped then and not in September”, the source said.
That was not on Lammy’s mind Monday when he clearly had an eye on possible negative reactions from Israel, whining “I have not gone as far as Margaret Thatcher went in 1982” when she imposed a total arms embargo after Tel Aviv invaded Lebanon.