Almost eight years since the Saudi-led war on Yemen, anti-arms trade groups in the UK will seek to reverse Liz Truss' decision to resume UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, acknowledging that she ignored the coalition's practices against civilians in Yemen.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) will file a judicial review in the High Court on Tuesday, the latest move in a long-running struggle over the legitimacy of a profitable trade worth more than £23 billion since the war in Yemen began, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.

Emily Apple, a spokesperson for CAAT, blamed the British government for “caring more about profit than war crimes", and its forecasted case to set out a string of civilian deaths caused by brutal airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition.

After the United States, Britain is the second greatest supplier of armaments to Saudi Arabia, having sold the royal Saudi air force Typhoon and Tornado jets, spare parts, and munitions, including Paveway IV bombs, Brimstone and Storm Shadow missiles.

UK killed thousands of Yemenis 

The group's lawyers will argue in front of a judge that Truss, the then-trade minister, was incorrect in concluding in July 2020 that the UK could resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia for weapons that could be used in Yemen because there had only been "isolated incidents" of violations of humanitarian law.

On 15 February 2020, five months before Truss took action, 34 people were killed, including 26 children, when airstrikes attacked a civilian gathering at the scene of a fighter plane accident in Al Hayjah, Al Maslub district. Another 19 people were hurt, 18 of whom were minors.

According to monitoring groups, aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition, which has been fighting in Yemen since 2015, have frequently killed or injured civilians in an irresponsible bombardment that amounts to a war crime in each case. British law prohibits the shipment of guns if there is a "clear risk" that weapons would be used to commit war crimes.

On the other hand, the UK has consistently stated that the clear risk criteria were not fulfilled - and that it takes its arms licensing responsibilities seriously. 

"We analyze all our export applications thoroughly against a tight risk assessment framework and keep all permits under careful and continuous evaluation as routine," a representative for the Department for International Trade (DIT) claimed earlier this month.

The lethal airstrikes have never stopped. Oxfam, which had engaged in the case, produced a report this year indicating that between January 2021 and February 2022, at least 87 civilians were murdered by Saudi-led coalition bombings in Yemen using weaponry provided by the UK and US.

The Saudi-led war on Yemen, which has involved multiple regional powers since it began in 2014, has been described as causing one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters. According to the Yemen Data Project, all parties involved in the battle killed 8,983 people.

Following a prior lawsuit by CAAT, the court of appeals found in June 2019 that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia were unlawful. That said, arms sales were halted for a year prior to Truss' statement.

They were quickly restarted, with £1.4 billion in weaponry documented in UK export records in the summer of 2020, and continued despite the US announcing a temporary restriction on military transfers to Riyadh.

The trade secretary makes decisions on licensing UK weaponry, but the minister consults with the foreign secretary of the day. 

Previous records show that in August 2016, Boris Johnson suggested that the UK allow Saudi Arabia to acquire British bomb parts, just days after an airstrike on a potato factory in Yemen killed 14 people.

Read more: "Everything is destroyed": Remembering Saudi-UAE massacres in Yemen