Egypt presidential decree allows Bahrain King to own villas in Sinai
MEMO | May 2, 2018
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi has issued a presidential decree permitting the King of Bahrain, Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa, to own two villas located in the South Sinai province of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt’s state’s official Gazette reported on Monday.
In accordance to the Sinai Development Law No.14/2012, any land on the peninsula can only be owned by Egyptian nationals.
However, a statement released on the State Information Service website claims that Al-Sisi issued a presidential decree approving treating Bahraini King Al Khalifa as an Egyptian citizen in 2016.
“The decree is also applicable to the possession of lands and villas in Naama Bay of Sharm El-Shiekh city for the purpose of residence,” the statement concluded.
The news comes just days after the announcement of a $15 billion project to develop the restive Sinai Peninsula that should be completed by 2022, with a presidential aide describing the scheme as “a project for national security”.
The project includes plans for a comprehensive network of roads, residential and industrial developments, four water desalination plants, hospitals and sewage networks. Funding sources for the initiative remain unclear.
Egypt is reportedly preparing to launch a significant military attack in upcoming days in the area bordering Gaza and Israel, with Egyptian forces amassing near the Rafah crossing.
However, last week, New York based watchdog Human Rights Watch expressed concern over the risk of a looming humanitarian crisis in North Sinai as a result of the Egyptian army’s military operation. Nearly 420,000 residents in four north-eastern cities are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance due to the ongoing battle.
According to the report, security forces have also imposed strict restrictions on the movement of goods and people throughout the governorate.
The report quoted local residents as saying that “the authorities have also banned the sale or use of gasoline for vehicle use in the area and cut telecommunication services for several days at a time. The government has cut water and electricity almost entirely in the most eastern areas of North Sinai, including Rafah and Sheikh Zuwayed.
Egypt has been facing a Daesh insurgency in the remote North Sinai region that has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen in recent years.
Human rights organisations have, however, accused Egypt of using the fight against terror in Sinai as a ruse to cover up the extrajudicial killing of opponents and critics.
Polisario Front: There Is No Military Presence by Any Foreign Power in Western Sahara
Al-Manar | May 2, 2018
The Polisario Front denied on Wednesday there was military presence by any foreign power in Western Sahara, a day after Morocco cut ties with Iran, accusing the Islamic Republic of providing support to the Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement.
UNews news agency reported that the Polisario Front hit back at Moroccan move to cut ties with Iran, stressing that the movement’s fighters are alone operating in the Western Sahara.
Meanwhile, Mehr news agency reported that the Front spokesman has dismissed the Moroccan government accusations against Iran as baseless and fabricated.
According to the Polisario Front’s website Hespress, the Front’s spokesman Muhammed Haddad has asked the Moroccan government to release any previously alleged evidence showing the links between Iran the Western Saharan movement.
Haddad added “through these maneuvers and accusations, Rabat seeks to refrain from negotiation on the desert, which the United Nations has called for.”
On Tuesday, Morocco’s foreign affairs minister, Nasser Bourita, claimed that Rabat had evidence showing Iranian government had provided financial as well as logistical support to Polisario through its embassy in Algiers.
The Morracan government has announced it will cut diplomatic ties with Iran over the accusations.
The Polisario Front is a Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement aiming to end Moroccan presence in the Western Sahara. It is an observer member of the Socialist International. The United Nations considers the Polisario Front to be the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people and maintains that the Sahrawis have a right to self-determination. The Polisario Front is outlawed in the parts of Western Sahara under Moroccan control, and it is illegal to raise its party flag (often called the Sahrawi flag) there.
Yemen conflict: Secret documents suggest 7,000 UK personnel may be complicit in Saudi slaughter
House destroyed in airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, on April 19, 2018. © Mohammed Dhari / Global Look Press
RT | May 2, 2018
To what extent is the UK aiding the Saudi intervention in Yemen? A new report suggests help is more hands-on than just defense deals.
Never seen before documents published as part of a new paper titled ‘UK Personnel Supporting the Saudi Armed Forces – Risk, Knowledge and Accountability’, suggest that some of the functions carried out by British personnel and arms companies in the Gulf kingdom may be more than what the Government is willing to admit.
According to the report, British arms deals to Saudi Arabia dating back to to 1985 have contained secret support clauses for British-made aircraft which tie British contractor and government personnel to Saudi military action, even if the UK is not itself involved directly.
These aircraft, namely Panavia Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoon fighters, have been conducting continuous airstrikes against targets in Yemen since the country erupted into civil war in 2015, with strong claims made by human rights organizations that war crimes are being conducted, including the use of cluster munitions.
A recent strike, on April 23, hit a wedding party where 20 civilians were killed. Since the Saudi-led intervention began and the end of 2017, some 5,500 civilians have been killed with over 9,000 injured, according to the UN. The country’s infrastructure has completely collapsed.
In December last year, the European Parliament adopted a resolution to suspend arms sales to the country on the back of these alleged charges.
Based on two years of interviews with former staff by Mike Lewis and Karen Templar, with support from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the paper is part of a wider ‘Brits Abroad’ project which examines the role of UK nationals operating outside the UK to contribute military and security services in armed conflicts.
While Whitehall has maintained that UK personnel currently stationed in Saudi Arabia have been away from any frontline roles including the targeting or weaponizing of British-made aircraft used in Yemen, terms contained in secret government-to-government contracts dating from 1986 still dictate British help to the Royal Saudi Air Force when the kingdom is at war.
The report puts the UK’s human ‘footprint’ at approximately 7,000 UK contractors, UK civil servants and seconded UK military personnel.
Al-Yamamah & Al-Salam
Attached to 1985’s infamous Al-Yamamah arms deal, which included the purchase of 72 Tornado fighter aircraft, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by both nations contains assurances that London’s support of the aircraft would continue “as long as the program lasts.”
Another 48 Tornado were added in 1993, and support was extended again under the Saudi British Defence Cooperation Programme (SBDCP) from 2006 onwards.
In 2005, the Al-Salam arms deal covered the delivery of 72 Typhoon fighter aircraft – built by the Eurofighter consortium which includes British firm BAE Systems – and came with a full support package.
From the Gulf War to Yemen
During the first Gulf War in 1990, BAE employees in Dhahran – now King Abdulaziz Air Base – directly maintained and loaded weapons for both RAF and RSAF Tornado aircraft. One former BAE Crew Chief at Dhahran, quoted in the report, claimed to the UK Ministry of Defence that “it was left up to literally a handful of us experienced ex-RAF personnel to direct combat ground operations” during the conflict.
Since then, BAE have been more reluctant to give such support to Saudi military excursions that does not directly involve the British military. In 2008 it issued a “pullback” from direct handling of cluster munitions in 2008, followed in 2009/10 with resigning from directly operational roles in squadrons engaged in active combat upon the start of Riyadh’s offensive in Yemen.
However, this “pullback”, British expats who worked as armorers and technicians claim, remained incomplete and British staff were still expected to carry out armoring tasks of aircraft and support ground activities.
Others took on maintenance and weapons management functions during night-shifts and back-shifts, furthering the blurring of advisory and operational roles, while others, there to train Saudi maintenance crew, took on deep maintenance of warplanes involved in strikes against Houthi rebels when Saudi staff were too few or off shift.
As recent as February 2017, job specifications released by BAE show that its employees “continue to be responsible for coordinating maintenance for the weapons systems of all RSAF’s Tornados, both in training and operational squadrons, and including those deployed to Forward Operating Bases.”
Not linked to 9/11, Iran has to pay billions: US judge
Press TV – May 2, 2018
A federal judge in New York has ordered Iran to pay $6 billion to the alleged families of 9/11 attacks even though a state investigation has found no link between Tehran and those who carried out the bombings.
The judgement, issued by Manhattan federal judge George Daniels on Tuesday, is also hollow because Iran has never responded to the lawsuit and is unlikely to ever pay.
The lawsuit claims that Iran provided technical assistance, training and planning to the al-Qaeda operatives that conducted the attacks.
However, the official investigation on the attacks, known as the 9/11 Commission Report, said that Iran did not play a direct role.
Nevertheless, Daniels insisted that the country was liable to more than 1,000 “parents, spouses, siblings and children” involved in the lawsuit. He signed off on a pro forma default order against “the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran” after they refused to respond to the suit.
The lawsuit is not linked to a case filed against Saudi Arabia, which families of 9/11 victims say provided direct support for the attackers. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens.
Last April, a federal judge in New York ordered Tehran to pay $11 billion in compensation to victim families of the 9/11 attacks while Saudi Arabia was cleared, prompting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to denounce the ruling.
“I have lost every respect for US justice. The judgment by the Supreme Court and the other, even more absurd judgment by a New York circuit court deciding that Iran should pay damages for 9/11 are the height of absurdity,” he said.
“How would you explain Iran being held accountable for the damages to the victims of 9/11—and others being absolved of any responsibility, those who were actually responsible for it?” he said apparently referring to Saudi Arabia.
The judge order on Tuesday does make the families eligible to collect from a small fund of seized Iranian assets.
Iran’s assets held in foreign banks have been subject to a witch hunt by the Americans who have used Washington’s animosity toward the Islamic Republic to easily win lawsuits against the country in US courts.
In February, a set of “plaintiffs” sought to seize priceless Persian artifacts held at a Chicago museum to satisfy a $71.5 million court judgment against Iran but their bid was blocked on appeal by the Iranian government and University of Chicago.
Iran has denounced US seizures of its frozen assets as “highway robbery” and pledged to haul the United States before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague.
The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) is suing a subsidiary of German stock-exchange operator Deutsche Borse for holding $4.9 billion of Iranian assets.
The assets reportedly include about $1.9 billion which Clearstream has turned over to the US to “compensate” around 1,000 Americans claiming damage from Iran over a 1983 bombing in Beirut and another attack in 1996 in Saudi Arabia.
South Carolina’s New Hate Speech Law Outlaws Criticism of the Israeli Occupation
Discussing the military occupation of the West Bank, a reality recognized even by Israel’s Supreme Court, would be considered anti-Semitic under the new South Carolina law.
By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | May 1, 2018
COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA — The state of South Carolina will become the first state in the nation to legislate a definition of anti-Semitism that considers certain criticisms of the Israeli government to be hate speech. The language, which was inserted into the state’s recently passed $8 billion budget, offers a much more vague definition of anti-Semitism that some suggest specifically targets the presence of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, movement on state college campuses. The law requires that all state institutions, including state universities, apply the revised definition when deciding whether an act violates anti-discrimination policies.
Once it is reconciled with an appropriations bill previously passed by the state House, the measure will become law and take effect this July. However, the law will last only until the next budget is passed, meaning that the new legal definition of anti-Semitism must be renewed on a yearly basis unless new legislation making the language permanent is passed in the future.
The new definition uses the State Department’s current definition of anti-Semitism as its template — defining speech that “demonizes” or applies “double standards” to Israel “by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” as anti-Semitic.
However, the State Department’s definition was never intended to be used as an enforcement tool, and concern has subsequently been raised that South Carolina colleges may now move to criminalize conventional and factual criticism of Israel under the new, vague definition of anti-Semitism.
Such concern is well-founded, in part because the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Alan Clemmons (R-Myrtle Beach), previously called the pro-Israel lobby J-Street “anti-Semitic” for referring to Israel’s presence in Palestine’s West Bank as an “occupation.” Thus, in Clemmons’ view, discussing the military occupation of the West Bank, a reality recognized even by Israel’s Supreme Court, would be considered anti-Semitic under the new South Carolina law.
Clemmons, a Mormon who has previously hosted state delegations to Israel, also considers the non-violent Palestinian rights movement Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) to be motivated by anti-Semitism and has been called “Israel’s biggest supporter in a U.S. state legislature.”
Honored to have visited with @realDonaldTrump @FLOTUS @netanyahu & @sara_netanyahu. #USA & #Israel are partners of light in a dark world! pic.twitter.com/SbWKEnJVVB
— Alan Clemmons (@RepAlanClemmons) June 28, 2017
In addition to the views of the bill’s sponsor, Kenneth Stern, the author of the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism upon which the new South Carolina law is based, has vehemently opposed codifying into law the definition he wrote, asserting that applying that definition to colleges “is a direct affront to academic freedom” as well as “unconstitutional and unwise.”
In regards to the South Carolina Law, Stern stated that it “is really an attempt to create a speech code about Israel,” adding that it is also “an unnecessary law that will hurt Jewish students and the academy.”
Other groups, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, have raised similar concerns, stating that “this vague and overbroad re-definition conflates political criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, infringing on constitutionally protected speech.”
Pro-Israel groups, in contrast, praised the law’s wording. The Brandeis Center, for instance, stated:
This bill gives South Carolina the tools to protect Jewish students’ and all South Carolina students’ right to a learning environment free of unlawful discrimination. We are hoping this momentous step will result in another national wave to, once and for all, begin defeating rising anti-Semitism.”
First clashes in a coming national battle?
The Brandeis Center’s allusion to a “national wave” aimed at legally conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism may be closer to reality than previously thought. Indeed, if Kenneth Marcus, Trump’s nominee to serve as the next Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, is confirmed in the coming months, the newly passed South Carolina law is likely to be repeated across the country.
Marcus, who once boasted of instilling “fear” into BDS activists and considers any demonstration of solidarity with Palestine as anti-Semitic, has long desired the post, as he sees it as a way to shut down BDS at the national level. As Marcus himself has noted, changing the legal definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of the Israeli state is a critical part of silencing BDS groups on U.S. college campuses.
Ultimately, the bill comes at a critical time for pro-Israel partisans seeking to curb the recent success of BDS at universities across the U.S. Indeed, just a week after the new South Carolina law was passed, the students at one of the country’s most Jewish colleges – Barnard College in New York – overwhelmingly supported a referendum asking its school’s administration to boycott, divest and sanction Israel for its violations of international law in Palestine. Such victories are apparently considered so dangerous by Israel’s right-wing and its U.S. equivalents that they have sought to restrict freedom of speech on college campuses nationwide in order to prevent them in the future.
In 2015, South Carolina became the first of at least 22 states to prohibit state agencies or institutions from contracting with any vendor participating in a boycott of Israel. A hub of the slaveholding South in the U.S., South Carolina is a deeply conservative state with strong ties to Christian evangelicals, but a relatively small Jewish population of roughly 20,000 — dwarfed by a state like Illinois with more than 300,000 Jews.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
Gazan Gandhis: Gaza bleeds alone as ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ go mute
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 1, 2018
Three more Palestinians were killed and 611 wounded last Friday, when tens of thousands of Gazans continued their largely non-violent protests at the Gaza-Israel border.
Yet as the casualty count keeps climbing – nearly 45 dead and over 5,500 wounded – the deafening silence also continues. Tellingly, many of those who long chastised Palestinians for using armed resistance against the Israeli occupation are nowhere to be found, while children, journalists, women and men are all targeted by hundreds of Israeli snipers who dot the Gaza border.
Israeli officials are adamant. The likes of Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, perceives his war against the unarmed protesters as a war on terrorists. He believes that “there are no innocents in Gaza.” While the Israeli mindset is not in the least surprising, it is emboldened by the lack of meaningful action, or outright international silence to the atrocities taking place at the border.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), aside from frequent statements laced with ambiguous legal jargon, has been quite useless thus far. Its Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, derided Israel’s killings in a recent statement, but also distorted facts in her attempt at ‘even-handed language’, to the delight of Israeli media.
“Violence against civilians – in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza – could constitute crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court … as could the use of civilian presence for the purpose of shielding military activities,” she said.
Encouraged by Bensouda’s statement, Israel is exploiting the opportunity to deflect from its own crimes. On April 25, an Israeli law group, Shurat Hadin, is seeking to indict three Hamas leaders at the ICC, accusing Hamas of using children as human shields at the border protests.
It is tragic that many still find it difficult to grasp the notion that the Palestinian people are capable of mobilizing, resisting and making decisions independent from Palestinian factions.
Indeed, for the nearly decade-long Hamas-Fatah feud, the Israeli siege on Gaza and throughout the various destructive wars, Gazans have been sidelined, often seen as hapless victims of war and factionalism, and lacking any human agency.
Shurat Hadin, like Bensouda, are all feeding into that dehumanizing discourse.
By insisting that Palestinians are not capable of operating outside the confines of political factions, few feel the sense of political responsibility or moral accountability to come to the aid of the Palestinians.
This is reminiscent of former US President Barack Obama’s unsolicited lecture to Palestinians during his Cairo speech to the Muslim world in 2009.
“Palestinians must abandon violence,” he said. “Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.”
He then offered his own questionable version of history of how all nations, including ‘black people in America’, the nations of South Africa, South East Asia, Eastern Europe and Indonesia fought and won their freedom by peaceful means only.
This demeaning approach – of comparing supposed Palestinian failures to others’ successes – is always meant to highlight that Palestinians are different, lesser beings who are incapable of being like the rest of humanity. Interestingly, this is very much the core of the Zionist narrative about the Palestinians.
That very notion is often presented in the question “where is the Palestinian Gandhi?” The inquiry, often asked by so-called liberals and progressives, is not an inquiry at all, but is a judgement – and an unfair one at that.
Addressing the question soon after the last Israeli war on Gaza in 2014, Jeff Stein wrote in Newsweek, “The answer has been blown away in the smoke and rubble of Gaza, where the idea of non-violent protest seems as quaint as Peter, Paul and Mary. The Palestinians who preached non-violence and led peaceful marches, boycotts, mass sit-downs and the like are mostly dead, in jail, marginalized or in exile.”
Yet, astonishingly, it is being resurrected again, despite the numerous odds, the unfathomable anger and unrelenting pain.
Tens of thousands of protesters, raising Palestinian flags continue to hold their massive rallies across the Gaza border. Despite the high death toll and the thousands maimed, they return everyday with the same commitment to popular resistance that is predicated on collective unity, beyond factionalism and politics.
But why are they still being largely ignored?
Why isn’t Obama tweeting in solidarity with Gazans? Why isn’t Hillary Clinton taking the podium to address the unremitting Israeli violence?
It is politically convenient to criticize Palestinians as a matter of course, and utterly inconvenient to credit them, even when they display such courage, prowess and commitment to peaceful change.
The likes of famed author, J.K. Rowling, had much to stay in criticism of the peaceful Palestinian boycott movement, which aims at holding Israel accountable for its military occupation and violations of human rights. But she became mute when Israeli snipers killed children in Gaza, while cheering whenever a child falls.
The singer Bono of the band U2 dedicated a song to the late Israeli President Shimon Peres, accused of numerous war crimes, but his voice seems to have grown hoarse as the Gaza boy, Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub, 15 was shot by an Israeli sniper while protesting peacefully at the border.
However, there is a lesson in all of this. The Palestinian people should have no expectations of those who have constantly failed them. Chastising Palestinians for failing at this or that is an old habit, meant to simply hold Palestinians responsible for their own suffering, and to absolve Israel from any wrong doing. Not even Israel’s ‘incremental genocide‘ in Gaza will change that paradigm.
Instead, Palestinians must continue to count on themselves; to stay focused on formulating a proper strategy that will serve their own interests in the long run, the kind of strategy that transcends factionalism and offer all Palestinians a true roadmap to the coveted freedom.
The popular resistance in Gaza is just the beginning; it must serve as a foundation for a new outlook, a vision that will ensure that the blood of Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub is not spilled in vain.
Israel ‘only state in Middle East that actually has nukes’: Analysts denounce Bibi’s Iran WMD claim
RT | May 1, 2018
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is the wrong person to accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons as his country has repeatedly refused to join any non-proliferation treaties which equates it to North Korea, Middle East experts told RT.
Israel and its PM “are in no position to accuse Iran of anything, they’re not part of the nuclear deal, they’re not even a member [of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty],” said Hamed Mousavi, Professor of Political Science at the University of Tehran.
The analyst then commented on Netanyahu’s well-rehearsed Monday show, in which he claimed Israel has incriminating evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear program in violation of the milestone 2015 deal. He noted the only entity in the world authorized to declare Iranian compliance or non-compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal is the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Mousavi went further, saying Netanyahu was “a serial liar,” also citing a 2011 microphone leak incident, in which former French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly spoke lowly of the Israeli premier.
“I can’t stand him,” he told Barack Obama, in what was believed to be a confidential discussion. The Frenchman also accused Netanyahu of constantly lying. Obama’s reply was: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”
“And we also have to remember the timing, I mean, this is coming less than two weeks before Trump makes a decision regarding if the United States wants to stay in the deal,” the expert said, noting that “Israel is the only regime in the region that actually has nuclear weapons.”
Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, though its officials have never officially denied nor admitted to having weapons of mass destruction. On the latest occasion, nuclear weapon proliferation experts Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen claimed in the renowned Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists back in 2013 that the Jewish state stopped producing nuclear warheads back in 2004 once it reached around 80 projectiles.
However, the country can easily double its arsenal since it has enough fissile material to build at least another 115 munitions, experts say.
In Mousavi’s view, if Donald Trump decides to come out of the nuclear accord, it would kill the deal. Iran could not afford complying with it because of US threats to sanction any company – not only American ones – that do business with the Islamic Republic. “And I think this is what Israel wants,” he concluded.
Dr. Maged Botros, Head of Political Science department at Helwan University in Egypt, emphasized that Netanyahu “repeatedly refused to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty,” which puts it “in the same position as North Korea.”
Netanyahu’s presentation has been “a setup for [US President Donald] Trump,” Botros said, suggesting the Israeli allegations could be a solution for the US President to throw away the 2015 deal.
The Egyptian expert recalled former US State Secretary Colin Powell, who claimed back in 2003 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “It proved to be false, now the history repeats itself,” he said.
North Korea accused Israel of having a nuclear arsenal last year, calling it a threat to peace in the Middle East. “Israel is the only illegal possessor of nukes in the Middle East under the patronage of the US. However, Israel vociferated about the nuclear deterrence of the DPRK, slandering it, whenever an opportunity presented itself,” the Foreign Ministry said at the time.
Read more:
‘Infamous liar’: Iran blasts Netanyahu for claims Tehran had nuclear weapons program
Skripal attack: Still no suspects, admits UK national security adviser but still blames Russia
RT | May 1, 2018
British police still have no suspects in the Skripal poisoning investigation, the UK’s national security adviser has admitted to a committee of MPs, despite the government continuing to place blame squarely on Russia.
Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury on March 4. They were both taken to hospital in a critical condition after apparently being poisoned by nerve agent A-234 (‘Novichok’). Yulia Skripal has since left hospital.
Sir Mark Sedwill, who co-ordinates the work of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, conceded to the Defence Select Committee that the UK is yet to identify the source of the agent used against the Skripals, or even a suspect in the case.
Britain publicly continues to directly blame Russia for the attack, but when asked whether anyone had been identified as being responsible for the poisoning, Sedwill said: “Not yet.”
Among the reasons given for the failure to identify a suspect is a lack of CCTV footage from Salisbury, despite the police saying they had collected thousands of hours worth of footage, and Britain having a reputation as being one of the most surveilled nations on earth. The Guardian reports that known Russian spies in Britain have also been ruled out after an investigation.
Sedwill explained that Russian defectors are also being monitored saying: “The police, who are responsible for protective security and the various agencies alongside them, are reviewing the security of all people who might be vulnerable.”
Britain has said only Russia could be responsible because the nerve agent used had been produced in the Soviet Union. However, ‘Novichok’ has reportedly been reproduced in other countries since, including in Iran in 2017.
The international chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), however, has repeatedly claimed it cannot identify the source.
Sergei Skripal, 66, a former military colonel who betrayed dozens of agents to British intelligence agency MI6, had been sentenced in 2006 to 13 years in a Russian prison for spying. But he was openly living under his real name in the UK after he was released as part of a spy swap between the US and Russia in 2010.
Russia has consistently denied being responsible for the poisoning, accusing Britain of making allegations without evidence and denying access to the Skripals despite both being Russian citizens.
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Wars for Israel: A reminder of who’s giving the marching orders
By Damian Lataan | February 7, 2012
As the West prepares to march off to yet another war in the Middle East, we should perhaps remind ourselves of who is giving the West their marching orders.
In February 2003, just weeks before the US and their allies launched their attack on Iraq and her peoples, a delegation of US congressmen, together with the US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, a well known pro-Zionist and neoconservative war-hawk, were in Israel at the invitation of the Israeli government then led by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Addressing the congressmen, Sharon told them ‘that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq’. Later, Sharon told John Bolton ‘that Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq’. … continue
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