Alwaght- The Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the US government to stop arming Saudi regime amid its daily airstrikes on Yemen.
"US continues to allow shipments of billions of dollars of arms to Saudi Arabia" while Riyadh and its allies "bomb homes, schools, hospitals, and funerals in Yemen", the human watch body said.
The New York-based body’s Washington director, Sarah Margon said in a letter to the US President Barak Obama that he has "one final chance to change US policy on Saudi Arabia and Yemen for the better by stopping weapons’ transfers immediately and reviewing possible participation of US forces in the coalition’s many unlawful airstrikes,”
The US approved more than $20 billion in military sales to the kingdom in 2015 alone.
The HRW further said Washington has been withholding clarification on reports that US forces were providing aerial refueling, tactical intelligence, or other support to the deadly campaign.
It said it had listed 58 “apparently unlawful” Saudi airstrikes, and 16 attacks involving internationally-banned cluster munitions, adding that the invaders had used US-manufactured weapons in 21 of these attacks.
The strikes using US arms included a March 15 attack against a crowded market in the Mastaba town of the northwestern Hajjah Province, which killed at least 97 civilians, and an October 8 attack on a funeral service in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, which left at least 100 people dead and more than 500 others wounded.
“Both appear to amount to war crimes,” the group said. “The repeated use of US-manufactured munitions in unlawful attacks in Yemen could make the US complicit for future transfers of arms to Saudi forces.”
It also cited a recent letter by Congressman Ted Lieu, in which he had drawn comparison between current US officials, who are likely contributing to the Saudi brutality, and former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was convicted in 2008 for aiding war crimes in Sierra Leone.
“The Charles Taylor case precedent puts US officials at risk of being implicated in aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen,” the lawmaker wrote.
The US has been training and arming the pro Saudi forces in Yemen during years leading up to the Saudi war on the country, WikiLeaks revealed.
The documents released on the whistle-blowing site include 500 documents, including emails and PDFs, pertaining to the Office for Military Cooperation (OMC) of the US embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana'a.
They conclusively prove that Washington has militarily supported the Saudi-backed government of Yemen’s former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi before Riyadh began its campaign against Yemen.
The Saudi-ally Hadi later resigned and took refuge in Riyadh that later initiated a brutal airstrike campaign to forcefully reinstate him as president.
The WikiLeaks documents are related to the time period from 2009 to just before Saudi Arabia launched the war.
"The war in Yemen has produced 3.15 million internally displaced persons. Although the United States government has provided most of the bombs and is deeply involved in the conduct of the war itself reportage on the war in English is conspicuously rare," said Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has long taken refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
In February 2015, the United States closed its embassy in Yemen over what it said were security concerns. A month later, Riyadh unleashed its war machine.
Washington has also been providing logistic and surveillance support for the Saudis in the military aggression, which has left at least 11,400 civilians dead, according to the latest tally by a Yemeni monitoring group.
