War on Want applies for judicial review against Government

Represented by Stephen Grosz of Bindman and Partners Solicitors, War on Want is seeking a judicial review on the basis that the government has wrongly applied its own rules on arms.

In a Joint Select Committee meeting on January 30, foreign secretary Robin Cook admitted that the spares were destined for specific use in the occupied territory of Western Sahara. A Foreign Office memo, issued on February 1, clearly states that the spares were destined for heavy guns stationed along the wall, or ‘Berm’, that Morocco built to maintain their occupation of Western Sahara.

However, Foreign Office and European Union guidelines advise that neither guns nor gun spares should be sent to regions where they could be used for internal repression, external aggression, or to stake a territorial claim.

War on Want has worked with the Saharawi people for the past 15 years. The 25-year conflict has prevented 170,000 Saharawi refugees from returning to their homes in Western Sahara, and reduced them to living in abject poverty in makeshift refugee camps over the Algerian border.

War on Want Senior Campaigner, Steve Tibbett, said, "The government has spectacularly failed to apply its own guidelines properly, with potentially deadly consequences. We cannot let this kind of thing happen again. The 170,000 people who live in horrendous conditions on the edge of the Sahara are in effect hostages to British weapons. We know that, without a free and fair referendum, any ceasefire is unlikely to be permanent."

"It is shameful that refurbishment of these guns has been sanctioned for use on what is the frontline of a twenty-five year long dispute over the territory. The key question that needs addressing is: why has the government allowed itself to break its own rules?"