My best friend died the other day. He and 21 other concert-goers were killed in the Manchester Arena by an individual to whom no attention should be paid. We cherish the memory of the victims and we mourn with their families.

Megan Hurley, Courtney Boyle, Philip Tron, Wendy Fawell, Elaine McIver, Eilidh MacLeod, Chloe Rutherford, Liam Curry, Sorrell Leczkowski, Nell Jones, Michelle Kiss, Jane Tweddle, Marcin Klis, Angelika Klis, Kelly Brewster, Olivia Campbell, John Atkinson, Alison Howe, Lisa Lees, Saffie Rose Roussos, Georgina Callander and my dear friend Martyn Hett. Equally, we will remember the victims whose lives were taken callously on London Bridge and in Borough Market.

One person who offered condolences to the Manchester victims was King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and head of the autocratic Saud family that has ruled Saudi Arabia since the foundation of the modern state in 1932. He picked up the phone to his staunch ally Theresa May and, like many of the world’s leaders, condemned the attack and said he was committed to standing shoulder to shoulder with Britain in the war on terror.

There is no reason to believe his words were insincere. Saudi Arabia has, after all, fallen victim to terrorism countless times on its own soil. Yet, there is a story that’s not being told, touched upon briefly by Caroline Lucas in Wednesday’s televised general election debate. As Lucas underlined, the UK is the world’s second biggest arms dealer, and delivers its bombs and guns to 22 of the 30 countries on our government’s own human rights watch list.

Alastair Bealby (left) with his friend Martyn Hett, who was killed in the Manchester bombing. Photograph: Alastair Bealby

It should come as no surprise that Saudi Arabia is high on that list with its repressive male guardianship system; its provisions for the imprisonment and execution of LGBT people; and its complete disregard for the freedoms of expression, association and belief. That’s before you even consider the Saudi-led bombing raids on Yemen, which the UN confirms have been the single biggest cause of the thousands of lives lost in the bloody conflict in the Arab world’s poorest country.



The list of Saudi atrocities is long and the victims are too numerous to name. So why is it that British firms have sold £3bn worth of weapons to the Saudis in the past three years alone, while the British government continues to send an annual aid package to Yemen amounting to a fraction of that revenue? Our government’s support for the Al Saud family makes us complicit in mass murder. Sadly, in Wednesday’s debate, Theresa May was too busy to turn up and defend her government’s appalling record. When confronted about the issue, her foot soldier, the home secretary, Amber Rudd, merely shrugged: “It’s good for industry.”

So what does all this have to do with the callous murder of 22 people in Manchester last week? Well, it requires us to look into the ideology that drove that sorry man to commit such an act. The Saudi-sponsored brand of Islam known as Wahhabism is widely considered to be the source of much extremist thought. In the words of the world’s largest Muslim youth organisation, it is characterised by antipathy – at times violent – towards Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and even other Sunni Muslims who do not share the Wahhabis’ rigid and authoritarian view of Islam.

Fans wearing T-shirts as a tribute to Martyn Hett at the One Love Manchester concert. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/AFP/Getty

“For more than fifty years, Saudi Arabia has systematically propagated a supremacist, ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam among Sunni Muslim populations worldwide,” read the official statement released by the Indonesian Muslim youth movement Gerakan Pemuda Ansor ,the day after my friend was killed. “The Wahhabi/ultra-conservative view of Islam – which is embraced not only by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but also by al-Qaida and Isis – is intricately wedded to those elements of classical Islamic law that foster sectarian hatred and violence.”

I do not blame May or her government for the death of my friend, nor do I hold anyone responsible for the depraved act other than the perpetrator himself, but we must look at these things in context. To shrug off complicity in the killing of thousands of innocents for the sake of industry is, to my mind, criminal. To turn a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s aggressive propagation of an ultra-conservative version of Islam and its role in the radicalisation of young minds is equally incriminating.

While you might attack Jeremy Corbyn for his failure to recall a figure when pushed by Emma Barnett on Woman’s Hour, or for his policies, you cannot possibly fault him on the pledge to end the sale of arms to the kingdom after almost 60 years. On Thursday, it is with conviction that I will cast my vote for Labour, and for our best chance of a foreign policy to be proud of: one that does not just aim to cash in on arms deals regardless of the consequences, but one that makes trade deals conditional on the guarantee of universal human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

A week after the attack, I returned to my workplace and knew I had to leave my job. Enough. When I signed up to a consulting job in public diplomacy for the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs I was unaware of what I was taking on, but 18 long months of compromising my morals have taken their toll.



The experience will haunt me: my complicity in extolling the virtues of Saudi Arabia’s baby steps towards gender equality, in extending Saudi commiserations over the deaths of young gay people in the Orlando bombing, in offering explanations for the bloody war in Yemen. The fact that it took the murder of my closest friend to take the leap into the dark is unfortunate, but in the few days since I have felt nothing but relief at the prospect of an unfettered future. Be more Martyn.

• This article was amended on 21 May 2018 because an earlier version gave Jane Tweddle’s surname as Tweddle-Taylor.