page_title: Saudi Arabia–United Kingdom relations
section_title: Human rights abuses
hierarchical_section_title: Saudi Arabia–United Kingdom relations / Human rights abuses
caption_attribution_description: English: A protest outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London on Friday 13 January 2017 to mark Raif Badawi's thirty third birthday. Badawi is a Saudi writer and activist who has been detained since 2012 for saying what he thinks.
context_page_description: According to the British government, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have long been close allies. The origins of these relations date back to the time of the First World War, when Ibn Saud signed the 1915 Treaty of Darin with the British government, thereby accepting the status of a British protectorate. On 20 May 1927, the British government and the Kingdom of Nejd concluded the Treaty of Jeddah, a further agreement. The United Kingdom was among the first states that recognised the country in 1926 and had a diplomatic delegation in the country. Saudi Arabia opened its embassy in London in 1930, which was the country's second official foreign affairs body abroad and led by Hafiz Wahbah.
  Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom are strategic allies. There are more than 200 joint ventures between British and Saudi Companies, worth $17.5 billion, and some 30,000 British nationals are living and working in Saudi Arabia as well as nearly 100,000 Saudi nationals living in the UK. Saudi Arabia is the United Kingdom's primary trading partner in the Middle East and the United Kingdom is Saudi Arabia's closest European ally.
context_section_description: In February 2015, Prince Charles visited Saudi Arabia, at the request of the British Government because of his close ties to the Saudi royal family, and he was accompanied by senior Foreign Office officials. According to a Telgraph source, Charles raised the case of Raif Badawi, a pro-democracy blogger who had been flogged in public a month before. The Telegraph source said the Prince received a "friendly response" from Saudi royals. Badawi remained in prison and his supporters fear he could be publicly flogged again at any time.
  In October 2018, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, went missing from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Turkish authorities accused the Saudi government of murdering and dismembering the 59-year old journalist. Khashoggi was a critic of crown prince Mohammad bin Salman and was living in exile in the United States from the past one year. Saudi denied the allegations. Amidst the controversy, Jeremy Hunt asked Saudi Arabia to urgently explain the disappearance of Khashoggi. In a phone call to Adel al-Jubeir, Hunt warned that "friendships depend on shared values".
  After Saudi Arabia accepted to have killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey, Theresa May vowed to not let any suspect involved in the murder enter the UK in future. She said if any suspect had a British visa, it would be revoked.
  On 12 November 2018, the UK Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt flew to Saudi Arabia to request Mohammad bin Salman’s cooperation with the Turkish authorities into the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Hunt said, "It is clearly unacceptable that the full circumstances behind his murder still remain unclear. We encourage the Saudi authorities to cooperate fully with the Turkish investigation into his death, so that we deliver justice for his family and the watching world. The international community remains united in horror and outrage at the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi one month ago."
  The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, during her 20-minute meeting with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, at the 2019 G20 Summit addressed the need for maintaining transparency in the Jamal Khashoggi murder legal process.
  On 6 June 2020, sixteen Members of Parliament from different parties and peers wrote a letter to the UK government urging them to actively look into the sportswashing attempts made by Saudi Arabia through the takeover of Newcastle United F.C. as a vehicle of to deflect from the kingdom’s poor human rights records. On 30 June 2020, the Premier League chief executive Richard Master, appearing in front of the culture and sport department select committee, was criticized by The SNP’s John Nicolson for hinting a possible takeover of Newcastle United F.C.. He argued that Premier League blocked Louis Tomlinson from taking over Doncaster Rovers for crimes against music, while it is  finding it difficult to block Prince Mohammed bin Salman who lured Jamal Khashoggi to enter Saudi embassy and later chopped him into small pieces.
  On 6 July 2020, under the post-Brexit measures, UK imposed tough sanctions on 20 Saudi nationals involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The new sanctions come into effect immediately, freezing the UK assets of those named by UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab and further banning them from entering the country.
  In July 2020, a group of cross-party MPs launched a bid to bar the potential transfer of ownership of Newcastle United from Mike Ashley (businessman) to the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is headed by Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. The group vowed that the takeover is a potential opening for Saudi to whitewash its image and that the transfer should not go ahead “unless Saudi Arabia reform their criminal justice system and release all political detainees”.
caption: A protest outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London, 13 January 2017
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