On Thursday, Amnesty International France, Sherpa, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and Mwatana for Human Rights filed a lawsuit in the Paris judicial court against Dassault Aviation, Thalès, and MBDA France for their complicity in war crimes in Yemen due to their arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
RELATED:
Yemen's Warring Parties Reach Agreement to Extend Truce
Human rights groups in France have repeatedly demonstrated that Paris' tacit support for the so-called Saudi coalition against Yemen has fanned the flames of conflict and resulted in a major humanitarian disaster in Yemen.
Riyadh's brutal campaign of violence against Yemen, backed by the U.S. and certain Western countries, started in March 2015 to restore fugitive former Yemeni president Abdu Rabu Mansur Hadi to power, resulting, after eight years of war, in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, turning the impoverished Arab country into a "hellhole."
"Coalition airstrikes have caused terrible destruction in Yemen. The weapons produced and exported by European countries, and in particular by France, have enabled these crimes," clarified the director of the Yemeni organization Mwatana for Human Rights, Abdulrasheed Al-faqih.
According to the four NGOs, the aforementioned French factories have supplied ammunition and maintenance services, worth more than 8 billion euros between 2015 and 2020, to Saudi Arabia and its allies.