“We call him the voice of Yemen abroad,” Ahmad Algohbary, a reporter and activist based in Sanaa, said. “Sam has become the talk of our streets.”



Kim Sharif, a Yemeni lawyer who has lived in the UK for decades, said many members of the Yemeni community were aware of the actions of Sam Walton. “Yemenis are very brave people themselves, so if they see someone doing something brave, they appreciate it. They thanked him, and quite a few of the leading members of the country sent him special messages, thanking him.”

Sara Adam, another Yemeni activist based in Sanaa, also said Walton was well-known to the English-speaking Yemeni community. “We know and love him,” she said. “I think he helps to stop the war on us,” she continued. “We love and respect him so much – he always stands with us.”

This January, Walton, a 31-year-old Quaker from Britain, broke into a BAE Systems base with a Methodist minister and attempted to smash up British-constructed fighter jets, sold to Saudi Arabia for use in the Yemen civil war.

He and the minister, 30-year-old Dan Woodhouse, were caught and charged with two counts of criminal damage. Over the course of a three-day trial near Manchester, the pair justified their actions. They were an attempt to prevent war crimes committed by the Saudis in Yemen, they said, an act of “necessity” to protect human health and life, and claimed they had a lawful excuse for the damage as it would protect other property in Yemen.

Extraordinarily, District Judge James Clarke agreed and found both men not guilty, under the Criminal Damage Act 1971, citing their right to damage property should there be genuinely held belief that doing otherwise might harm other something else – like the property of Yemeni civilians trapped in a civil war.

Only days before, defence secretary Michael Fallon was questioned by a Commons committee on why a deal to sell Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia had not yet gone through. He said criticism of Saudi Arabia was “not helpful”, and that the government needed to do “everything possible” to convince the Saudis to take “batch two” of the jets. The case’s outcome may disrupt that effort.

The Methodist minister and the Quaker broke into a secure military base, in the middle of nowhere, to attack state-of-the-art military fighter jets, all in an attempt, they say, to prevent war crimes being committed by Saudi Arabia – and ended up famous in Yemen.

How did this happen? Blame a wedding.