Slain US-based dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (L) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Photo via Twitter)

The United Kingdom has reportedly offered Saudi Arabia profuse apologies, only days after London publicly leveled criticism against the ultra-conservative kingdom over its human rights abuses and imposed sanctions on the Riyadh regime in this regard.

According to a report published by the online publisher The Independent, British officials called to apologize to the Riyadh regime on Monday after the government imposed economic sanctions on 20 Saudi nationals held responsible for the killing of US-based dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi, a 59-year-old Washington Post columnist, was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Turkish officials said his body was dismembered by the killers and his remains have yet to be found.

Turkish prosecutors indicted 20 Saudi nationals over the gruesome murder, including several with close ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS).

Some Western governments and intelligence services, as well as the CIA, say they believe MbS, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, ordered the killing.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is understood to have discreetly telephoned the Saudi crown prince, who is also the kingdom’s Saudi defense minister, on Wednesday to reiterate the UK’s support for the Riyadh regime and its work.

The call was not publicized by the British government, but Saudi Arabia’s state-run news agency SPA boasted about it in a press statement released on Wednesday.

His Royal Highness Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Deputy Minister of Defense, received yesterday a phone call from His Excellency British Defense Secretary sic, Mr. Ben Wallace, during which the partnership between the two countries was discussed, especially in the defense field, and the efforts made by the two countries to enhance regional and international security, the statement read.

Layla Moran, a candidate in the ongoing Liberal Democrat leadership contest, told The Independent, It looks like the UK government took action against Saudi individuals one day, then called to apologize privately the next.

This sends completely the wrong message to nations and individuals involved in human rights abuses around the world, she said.

The government needs to decide once and for all what kind of global nation they intend the UK to be: a global champion of liberal values or an apologist for human rights abusers, Moran pointed out.

The report of the call comes as the UK is going to resume weapons sales to Saudi Arabia despite international concerns the munitions could be used in the years-long war on Yemen.

Opposition legislators and campaigners against the arms trade slammed the morally indefensible decision by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government.

Last year, a court ruling concluded that the UK’s licensing of arms sales to Saudi Arabia was unlawful. The verdict was passed after campaigners argued that British officials had failed to make a proper assessment of humanitarian risks.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring Saudi-backed former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.

More than half of Yemen’s hospitals and clinics have been destroyed or closed during the war by the Saudi-led coalition, which is supported militarily by the UK, US and other Western nations.

SOURCE: PRESS TV