“Britain is one of the world´s biggest arms traders, with a long history of arming the most oppressive regimes, like Libya, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, who we can assume used UK arms in putting down Arab Spring rebellions,” STWC said.
“Out of the 26 countries that the UK has highlighted as being ‘countries of concern´ on human rights, we sell arms to 16 of them,” it said.
In 2010, the report listed the UK as selling tear gas, crowd control armament and sniper rifles to Libya and Bahrain.
In the same year, over £215 million of military equipment was exported to Libya from the UK, including crowd control ammunition, small arms ammunition, tear gas and sniper rifles.
Equipment exported to Bahrain included tear gas, crowd control ammunition, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and sub-machine guns.
“Bahrain has been listed by the UK Government as a key market for UK arms exports,” the report said, linking it with video footage indicating UK-made troop personnel carriers were used against democracy protestors in Libya and Bahrain.
“That´s not a new development: in 2009, Saudi Arabian air strikes in Yemen killed many civilians. Amnesty International reported that UK-supplied planes may have been used in war crimes. Saudi Arabia is the UK´s biggest arms customer,” it said.
Other Arab spring countries whose governments have been armed by the UK included Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Tunisia.
The report comes ahead of the British government hosting its biennial DSEi arms fair in east London, one of the biggest in the world, at which many of the same weapons are on display.