UK ‘Officer Training School’ receives £3m ‘blood money’ from brutal Bahrain Regime

Sandhurst took £3m Bahrain gift after regime’s crackdown
2 September, 2012 – by Simon Murphy and Martin Williams – The Bureau of Investigate Reporting

Britain’s world-famous officer training school, Sandhurst, has accepted a £3m donation from the King of Bahrain, despite global criticism of the regime following a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators last year.

Documents obtained by the Bureau reveal the top military training establishment was in negotiations with the regime about the donation throughout 2011. It received the money in January 2012 and sent a gushing letter thanking the King of Bahrain for his generosity at the beginning of summer.

The academy, which is responsible for training British Army officers, is using the donation to build a sports hall which is due to open early next year. It will be named in the country’s honour.

The donation is part of a long-standing relationship between the Bahraini royal family and Sandhurst. The King, Hamad bin Essa Al Khalifa, was trained at the Surrey-based academy, as are a select group of Bahraini military personnel each year.

The King has also been a patron of the Sandhurst Foundation, the academy’s alumni charity, since 2007. He twice donated a fee of £69,975 to the Foundation in 2011 and 2012.

The Sunni regime, which rules over the Shia majority, was criticised after the Saudi National Guard were deployed to crush pro-democracy protests that started in February 2011, sparked by the Arab Spring movement. Hospital staff were arrested for helping protestors and many are still on trial.

Jeremy Corbyn MP condemned the decision to accept the donations.

‘Bahrain has an appalling human rights record and even now medical practitioners are on trial for helping victims,’ he said.

‘It is disgraceful that the British government should allow the King of Bahrain to fund Sandhurst and it seems there is a completely different set of standards on human rights relating to Bahrain, compared to many other states in the Gulf and Middle East region.’

The MoD has provided training for 77 Bahraini military personnel at Sandhurst since 1992, including three last year, and 39 in the past decade, according to a response to a Freedom of Information request.

An MoD spokesman told the Bureau that although the training costs the government £78,000 per recruit, Bahrain only pays £48,400, meaning the government subsidises training costs to the tune of £29,600 in each case. Figures suggest this will have cost the MoD £384,800 in the past three years alone.

An MoD spokesman argued that the subsidies were beneficial to Britain as they ‘help them [Bahraini military personnel] see how we do things,’ – a practice dating back to 1947.

The recruits undergo a 48-week Army Commissioning Course, which the MoD says gives ‘a grounding in British Military doctrine’ and teaches ‘to think and communicate as commanders and to foster a deep interest and care for the individual’. …more