Saudi-led coalition starts first trials of own personnel over Yemen war violations

In a first, Gulf alliance fighting in Yemen will hold courts-martial for forces accused of breaching international law there

A Saudi-led military coalition attacked multiple sites in Yemen, leaving dozens dead (Reuters)

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen says it has launched the first court-martial proceedings against its military personnel suspected of violating international law during the five-year civil war.

Spokesperson Colonel Turki al-Maliki said in a briefing in London that they had finished collating investigation files into incidents that breached the rules of engagement and would hold “those who had breached the law to account”, Saudi’s official news agency said.

Last year the United Nations’ panel of experts accused the Gulf alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, of possible war crimes, saying the coalition had killed civilians in airstrikes and deliberately denied people food in a country facing famine.

The panel also expressed “serious concern” about the impartiality of the coalition’s internal investigations lead by its Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT).

Saudi Arabia rejected the allegations and opposed the Human Rights Council’s decision to create the Yemen panel, refusing to cooperate with it.

This week the coalition began its own legal proceedings instead.

Col Malik said the court martials “renewed the coalition’s commitment to the provisions and rules of international humanitarian law” and would hold to account “violators of the rules of engagement and violators of international humanitarian law”, the Saudi Press Agency wrote.

He said files of the investigations had been sent to the relevant countries, adding that “the judicial authorities have begun the procedures of the trial”.

No details were given about which incidents were being investigated. The Guardian reported that the legal proceedings concerned three airstrikes, one that hit an MSF-supported hospital in 2016 killing 16 people, a second that struck a wedding in 2018 that killed 20 and a third which killed more than 40 school children on a school bus in 2018.

Yemen has been ravaged by a five-year civil war, first triggered when the Houthi rebels swept through the country, ousting recognised president Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, alarmed by the presence of an Iran-backed group on its borders, launched a bombing campaign in the same year to re-instate their ally Mr Hadi.

Five years on, there is little hope of a speedy resolution to the crisis which has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in terms of numbers and pushed the country to the brink of famine. At least 100,000 people have been killed, according to monitoring groups.

In September, a UN panel said it believed all parties of the conflict had likely committed war crimes through airstrikes, indiscriminate shelling, snipers, landmines, as well as arbitrary killings and detention, torture, and the impeding of access to humanitarian aid.

It also expressed “serious concerns about JIAT’s independence and its ability to carry out impartial investigations”.

The UN has repeatedly called for the coalition to take measures to minimise the number of civilian casualties in its bombing campaigns.