LIZ TRUSS’S decision to resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia despite a previous court ban was “absurd,” a lawyer representing campaigners told the High Court yesterday.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) is challenging the July 2020 decision by the then international trade secretary to allow the licensing of arms deals with the kingdom, which has committed multiple breaches of international humanitarian law in Yemen.

Since the conflict began in 2015, Britain has sold military equipment worth more than £23 billion to the Saudi regime.

Bombing has hit hospitals, weddings, funerals and key infrastructure, killing nearly 9,000 civilians.

Yesterday, the court heard evidence of emails from the government detailing its process for reviewing the sales after the government was ordered to review the trade by a previous CAAT challenge in 2019.

The government claimed that any possible breaches of international humanitarian law had been “isolated incidents.”

However, the court heard that over half of the incidents were not even counted in the government’s analysis, despite credible evidence that they had taken place.

The government also asserts that such breaches were to be expected in a conflict of this nature.

Representing CAAT, Ben Jaffey KC told the court that Ms Truss’s logic was “absurd” and said that the government had shown a “remarkable lack of curiosity” in trying to determine how and why these incidents had taken place.

An email from an unnamed government official cited in court stated that the government had used circular reasoning in concluding that there wa no “pattern” to the violations.

CAAT’s Emily Apple said the group was taking the legal action to “try to gain some semblance of justice for all the Yemeni people who’ve had their lives devastated by UK bombs.”

She said: “Despite the Court of Appeal finding that its decisions on arms sales were ‘irrational and therefore unlawful,’ the government is using this spurious claim that the numerous and repeated bombings of civilians were mere ‘isolated incidents’ to justify this abhorrent and deadly trade.

“Evidence heard in court shows that this claim is utter nonsense.

“It is clear that the government cares more about lining the pockets of arms dealers then the lives of Yemeni people and we will continue challenging this unlawful and immoral trade in every way we can.”

The hearing is expected to conclude today, but a verdict may not be delivered for some months.