UK's Scandal-Hit Prince Andrew Helped Spruce Up Saudi Arabia's Image

TEHRAN (FNA)- Prince Andrew, who is facing fresh scrutiny over a sex abuse scandal, reportedly helped Saudi Arabia repair its image battered over the kingdom's human rights record and war on Yemen.

News ID: 449634

Date: 16 March 2020 - 10:39

RNA - According to British newspaper Daily Mail, the Duke of York’s new public relations aide has played a key role in transforming Saudi Arabia's image after a torrent of widespread international condemnation over the killing of thousands of Yemeni civilians.

The daily said that Pagefield Global Counsel (PGC) founder Mark Gallagher, whose firm was hired by Saudi Arabia in 2018, helped to develop a pamphlet promoting Saudi aid to Yemen that was distributed to British MPs.

Nicknamed “the backroom fixer”, Gallagher specializes in crisis management and has been brought in to help restore Prince Andrew’s reputation in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

The appointment comes after the Telegraph exclusively revealed that the beleaguered royal had hired Britain’s most respected extradition lawyer to fend off an FBI inquiry into his friendship with the convicted pedophile.

Andrew has faced mounting pressure to cooperate with the FBI and US prosecutors in their investigation into Epstein, the US financier and convicted sex offender who died in custody while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

US Attorney Geoffrey Berman says the Duke has refused to cooperate. A source told PR Week magazine that Gallagher "has no doubt that the Duke will be exonerated".

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a deadly war on Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall a former regime and eliminate the Houthis, who have been defending the country along with armed forces.

The Western-backed military aggression, coupled with a naval blockade, has destroyed the country’s infrastructure, and led to a massive humanitarian crisis.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past nearly five years.

The Saudi-led coalition has been widely criticized for the high civilian death toll from its bombing campaign. The alliance has carried out nearly 20,500 air raids in Yemen, according to the data collected by the Yemen Data Project.

Yemen's al-Masirah TV channel reported on Saturday that warplanes belonging to the Saudi-led coalition had pounded a farm in the city of al-Hazm, the capital of the Northern al-Jawf province, killing a farmer.

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