The Independent reports on Liz Truss being accused of “lying” to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about raising human rights in a meeting with rulers of Saudia Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf states.
Soraya Bauwens, deputy director of Reprieve, said that it “defies belief that Liz Truss could meet with leaders of some of the most repressive regimes in the world without raising their horrific human rights abuses”.
“Child defendants in Saudi Arabia continue to face the death penalty. Both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are crushing dissent by torturing and executing pro-democracy protesters and punishing people for their tweets or for the ‘crime’ of owning books.”
“The Foreign Office must come clean with the public about whether the now Prime Minister misled a Parliamentary Committee about her apparent abject failure to hold these governments accountable for their atrocities, especially as the UK Government recently more than doubled its funding to state bodies in these countries.”
