Saudi Arabia’s Execution of Hussein Abo al-Kheir
Debate between David Davis and Leo Docherty(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs if he will make a statement on Saudi Arabia’s execution of Hussein Abo al-Kheir.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)
Saudi Arabia, of course, remains a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office human rights priority country, in part because of the continued use of the death penalty. It is long-standing UK policy to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances, in all countries, as a matter of principle. The Saudi Government are well aware of the UK’s opposition to the use of the death penalty. The UK Government have consistently raised the issue of the death penalty, including the case of Jordanian national Mr Hussein Abo al-Kheir, with the Saudi authorities. The Minister for the middle east and north Africa and for human rights, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, has actively raised concerns about the death penalty and the specific case of Mr al-Kheir with the Saudi authorities on multiple occasions, including doing so with the president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission in December 2022 and when he visited the kingdom in February 2023. Lord Ahmad also raised the case with the Saudi ambassador to the UK, including in November 2022 and in January of this year.
On learning about the imminency of the execution, which took place on Saturday 11 March, Lord Ahmad again spoke to the president of the Saudi HRC, the Saudi vice-Foreign Minister and the Saudi ambassador. Saudi Arabia is committed to an ambitious programme of economic and social reform, through “Vision 2030”, which has already delivered significant change, including increased freedoms and economic opportunity for women. However, the human rights situation is likely to remain a key issue in our engagement for the foreseeable future. We will continue to discuss human rights and the death penalty, including individual cases of concern, with the Saudi authorities.
Mr Davis
Hussein Abo al-Kheir had been on death row since 2015. He had been tortured into a false confession and always maintained his innocence. When I was told this weekend that his execution was imminent, I urgently wrote to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the junior Minister, Lord Ahmad, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia and the Saudi ambassador to the UK, calling for intervention to prevent Hussein’s execution—I received no formal reply, although I understand that a letter has arrived in my office since I have been in the Chamber. Hussein was subsequently executed. A response given on Tuesday to questions from the Father of the House appeared to suggest that, despite my representations, only low-level attempts were made to talk to the Saudis over the weekend. In 2015, the Foreign Secretary’s predecessor, Philip Hammond, intervened himself, successfully, to prevent the execution of a Saudi youth activist, and he prevented many more executions by so doing; that intervention saved Ali’s life. I firmly believe that a stronger intervention over the weekend could have saved Hussein’s life and perhaps more to come.
Saudi Arabia continues to be one of the most prolific users of the death penalty, killing more than 130 individuals in 2022. Since 1 March this year, the Kingdom has executed 11 people, including for non-violent drug offences. That goes against Saudi Arabia’s informal moratorium on the use of the death penalty for drug-related offences. Being soft with totalitarian states comes back to bite us, as we know from the Russian example. We must make it clear to our ally that it must abide by international standards of civilised behaviour; doing so might just save the lives of those who remain on death row.
Leo Docherty
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for describing the number of letters he has sent and pointing out that a response has been had. I am pleased that that is the case. I assure him that a range of interventions were made, as I described, at the most senior level by Lord Ahmad. That describes the energy with which he has made these representations, so we can be confident that a great deal of energy was expended in that effort. Of course, we cannot speculate as to the particulars of the case. My right hon. Friend mentioned the apparent spike in cases. Again, it might not be useful to speculate, but it might be that a pre-Ramadan surge of cases is adding to the apparent uptick. I understand that the moratorium relates to drug use rather than drug smuggling, and this case pertained to an allegation of and conviction for smuggling rather than use, which I think is relevant. It is not useful to speculate further on the particulars of this case, but we do make clear our continued opposition to the use of the death penalty, and our close working relationship with the Saudi authorities allows us to do just that in a way that allows us to appeal for clemency.
Leo Docherty
Our policy is unchanged. We resolutely continue to oppose the death penalty. We make that very clear. That has been our long-standing policy position and that continues to be the case.
Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill
Debate between David Davis and Leo Docherty(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Leo Docherty
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I think he will derive reassurance from the remarks that I am shortly about to make, so I ask him to bear with me.
These concerns are that, by not excluding other serious offences, the Bill risks damaging not only the UK’s reputation for upholding international humanitarian and human rights law, including the UN convention against torture, but the reputation of our armed forces. Although we can be absolutely reassured that our armed forces would never resort to acts of genocide or crimes against humanity, and that it would be extremely unlikely for individual members of the services to be charged with such offences, not explicitly excluding these offences from the Bill is clearly an omission that must be rectified, and I am therefore happy to propose that now.
In addition, in order to prevent any further perceived damage to the UK’s reputation in respect of our ongoing commitment to uphold the rule of law and our international obligations, particularly the UN convention against torture, the amendment would add torture offences to the list of excluded offences in schedule 1. The intent of the Bill as drafted is to ensure that the part 1 measures will apply to as wide a range of offences as possible in order to provide reassurance to our service personnel that the operational context will be taken into account in relation to allegations of criminal offences on historical overseas operations. Excluding further offences beyond those of genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and sexual offences would, however, undermine that reassurance by excluding a considerable list of offences from the application of the measures in part 1. We believe that we can take this approach safe in the knowledge that the prosecutor retains their discretion to make the appropriate decision about whether to prosecute a service person on a case-by-case basis, including in respect of other serious offences. The presumption, therefore, against prosecution is a high threshold; it is not a bar.
In proposing this amendment, which will see the exclusion of a greater number of offences from the measures in part 1, the Government believe that it is appropriate to also propose the removal of the delegated power in clause 6, which allows the Secretary of State to amend schedule 1.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
May I also welcome my hon. Friend to the Front Bench? It is an overdue promotion.
May I bring him back to this question of war crimes? He will talk about the Henry VIII clause in a minute, but I want to bring him back to this question. Many of us who are emotionally very supportive of the Bill and, indeed, its successor in respect to Northern Ireland do not want to see, under any circumstances, British soldiers brought before the International Criminal Court. That would be a shame on them and a shame on our country. The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has made it plain that, in the event that we hinder—and this would be a hindrance—the prosecution of war crimes, they would see it as appropriate for them to bring the prosecution. Much of this is a fantastic improvement, but that seems to me a fairly sizeable hole in the improvement.
Leo Docherty
I take my right hon. Friend’s point, but the point to bear in mind is that nothing in the Bill will hinder a prosecution of that sort. What we must bear in mind is that the prosecutor retains the absolute discretion to prosecute if there is a serious allegation. The prosecutor will take into account the severity of the crime, but removing any more categories from the Bill would unnecessarily weaken the reassurance to service personnel and veterans. We must remember that it is a high threshold and not a bar. I hope that he is reassured by my words.
Mr Davis
I entirely agree with the point that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) just made. The issue starts with the investigative mechanisms inside the Ministry of Defence. My hon. Friend does not need to take it just from us; he should look at the comments of Justice Blackett, who, as a former JAG, was expert in the matter and understood it all too well.
Leo Docherty
I acknowledge the contributions of both right hon. Members. I agree that the length of investigations is the recurring problem, but I point out that since the early days of our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, our ability to carry out rigorous and timely investigations has radically improved. That should be borne in mind when we consider the Bill.
Closing down or restricting the investigative timeline as subsection (3) of the Lords amendment would do raises the risk of contravening our legal obligations to investigate allegations of serious crimes effectively and presents the serious risk of the ICC determining that we are unwilling or unable to investigate alleged offences on overseas operations properly. An effective investigation is led by the evidence, on a case-by-case basis, not carried out under the shadow of arbitrary timescales.
Furthermore, and of equal concern, is that we could also fail to clear the names of our own forces or fail to provide much needed closure to the families of deceased personnel if investigations are curtailed in this way. Lords amendment 2 would introduce a novel role for the Service Prosecuting Authority and for the Judge Advocate General to make direction in relation to investigations. Neither of those new roles is necessary.
While we accept that there may have been shortcomings in some of the early investigations in Iraq, that is simply not the case now. All elements of the armed forces, including the service police, have come a long way since then. Lessons have been learned. Processes, policies, training and education have all been updated to reflect the experiences of those early days and matters that have arisen since. Lords amendment 2 is therefore not only unnecessary, but unworkable and would seriously risk the UK’s failing to meet its legal obligations. I therefore strongly urge the House to reject it.
Lords amendment 3 removes clause 12 and will mean that future Governments are not required by statute to consider whether to make a derogation under article 15 of the European convention on human rights in relation to significant overseas operations. The ability under article 15 to derogate in appropriate circumstances will remain, and the Government will still have the freedom, when committing the armed forces to significant operations, to derogate from the ECHR. That is why the Government have agreed to Lords amendment 3.
Lords amendment 4 carves out claims by service personnel and veterans from the limitation longstops in part 2 of the Bill. The urge to give special consideration to our service personnel who make great sacrifices to serve us is noble, but I believe that the amendment is unnecessary, not only for reasons that I will come on to, but because it would be discriminatory to single out service people in this way.
The limitations longstops in part 2 of the Bill have been introduced to help address the difficulties the MOD has faced in defending civil claims arising from historical overseas military operations, as the longstops provide greater legal certainty and greater certainty to service personnel and veterans that they will not be called upon many years after operations have ended to give evidence about potentially traumatic events relevant to a claim. That is at the heart of protecting our service personnel and veteran community against the legacy of lawfare as experienced following operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What is also important for service personnel is that these measures may also help reduce criminal investigations many years or decades after operations have ended. That is because in future, the longstops will likely encourage any civil claims to be brought sooner, and any associated criminal allegations are also therefore likely to be investigated sooner.
Lords amendment 4 concerns the fact that the limitation longstops in part 2 would apply to service personnel and veterans and civilians alike. However, I strongly believe that the impact on our service personnel and veterans would in practice have been minimal. The vast majority of service personnel and veterans already bring timely claims. Our analysis of the relevant figures indicates that around 94% of claims from service personnel and veterans arising from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were brought within six years of the date of the incident or the date of knowledge. What that means is that any carving out of claims by service personnel from the longstops would have very little practical impact.
It is true that based on our analysis of historical claims, 6% of service personnel brought their claims after six years from the date of knowledge or incident. The Government clearly have a role to play in ensuring that potential claimants know about the measures we are introducing in the Bill. We will therefore make service personnel aware that a claim in connection with an overseas operation will have to be brought within the relevant time periods.