Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blocked the inclusion of Saudi Arabia on a U....
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blocked the inclusion of Saudi Arabia on a U.S. list of countries that recruit child soldiers, dismissing his experts’ findings that a Saudi-led coalition has been using under-age fighters in Yemen’s civil war, according to four people familiar with the matter.
State Department experts recommended adding Saudi Arabia to the soon-to-be released list based in part on news reports and human rights groups’ assessments that the desert kingdom has hired child fighters from Sudan to fight for the U.S.-backed coalition in Yemen, the four sources said. Pompeo rejected the recommendation from the experts, who are from the State Department’s anti-human trafficking office, said the four sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. The office has a key role in investigating the use of child soldiers worldwide.”The United States condemns the unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers. We place great importance on ending the practice wherever it occurs,” a State Department official said in response to Reuters’ questions.
“This is reprehensible,” U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a post on Twitter. “Is there no limit to what the Trump Admin is willing to do to cover for #SaudiArabia’s human rights abuses and violations of international norms?” Congressmen Tom Malinowski and Ted Lieu organized a letter to Pompeo from more than a dozen lawmakers in March that said they were “gravely concerned by credible reports” of the Saudi-led coalition deploying Sudanese child fighters in Yemen.
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