Last week, bombshell reporting by veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed that the Biden administration was directly responsible for September’s attacks against the Nord Stream network, which cut off a major Russian route for energy deliveries to Germany, and undermined Europe’s energy security.
Denmark and Sweden have failed to respond to Russian overtures to discuss the Nord Stream blasts for nearly six months now, with their behavior constituting nothing short of a “boorish” attempt to hide Washington’s responsibility for the sabotage attack, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
“For half a year now they’ve been as silent as a fish on ice, and since September neither the Swedes nor the Danish have responded to official letters of our prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, who very politely offered to appoint some kind of contact person with whom it would be possible to hold talks, since [the attack] took place in the territorial waters of their exclusive zones, and the pipelines are the property of a Russian company,” Lavrov said, speaking to reporters on Wednesday.
“If since September the head of the Russian government is waiting for a reply from the absolutely independent sovereign states in question, if our ambassadors remind the prime ministers of these countries about once a month that they’ve been contacted, at least tell him ‘yes mister prime minister, we have received your appeal but we’re busy at the moment’. But we haven’t got even that. I think this is boorishness. But this boorishness masks the total failure of attempts to obscure the responsibility of the collective West, led by the United States, for this sabotage, for organizing this terrorist act,” the Russian top diplomat added.
Lavrov characterized the sabotage of Nord Stream a “final solution to the German gas issue” by its overseas partners. “Just as they are now trying to resolve the ‘Russian question,’ so did they want to resolve the ‘German question,’ so that Berlin would never try to play any kind of independent role in the foreseeable historical perspective,” Lavrov said, recalling how competitively-priced and dependable Russian energy had enabled Germany to become Europe’s leading economy.
“Germany was not just humiliated, but was put in its place – the place of a satellite of the United States, with Washington deciding whether the country can ensure its economic development, meet the social needs of its citizens through the use of gas coming through a pipeline which Berlin partially paid for itself.” The Biden administration doesn’t seem to “give a damn about what hardship will befall many countries, including their close allies,” Lavrov emphasized.
Lavrov suggested that the modern history of Europe has shown that whenever Russia and Germany enjoy good relations and are able to cooperate economically, in logistics and even militarily, Europe enjoys calmer, more peaceful times, to the irritation of forces across the ocean or across the English Channel, who seek to command Europe’s destiny.
1984-Style Blackout on Hersh Revelations
Commenting on Hersh’s bombshell reporting on the Nord Stream blasts, and the media blackout in coverage of the story except to attack or smear the veteran investigative reporter, Lavrov compared Western governments’ behavior to a “trend” straight out of a George Orwell novel in which the state keeps media firmly under control.
“Look at the reaction in the West to Hersh’s precise, fact-based revelations in connection with the explosions of Nord Stream 1 and 2,” Lavrov said. The Russian diplomat pointed out that if Moscow was to be blamed, for instance, for the disruption of an oil pipeline between Canada and the US, the media would be forced to write about it non-stop. But with Hersh’s story – grounded in facts, the reaction has been zilch.
Lavrov urged the foreign press to conduct fact-based investigations into the costs being borne by European economies after the rejection of Russian energy, and to dig more closely into the details of the revelations uncovered by Hersh.
Consequences
As the potential implications of his reporting for international politics continue to reverberate, Hersh said Wednesday that he expects the “enormous” political consequences of the US attack on Nord Stream to last for many years, “looking even at the potential of countries walking out of NATO.”
The investigative journalist, who has an unimpeachable reputation for accuracy and over 60 years of journalistic experience under his belt, has also blasted his detractors for their cowardice, pointing out that despite his long careers with both the New York Times and the Washington Post, “neither paper has run a word this point about the pipeline story, not even to quote the White House’s denial of my reporting.”
The Russian mission to the United Nations plans to organize a Security Council meeting on the attack on Nord Stream on February 22, citing “new information” about the attack unveiled in Hersh’s reporting.
The United States legislature is one of the few in the world using the controversial designation of “state sponsor of terrorism”, colloquially often used in its shortened form, the terrorist state. At present, the State Department lists four countries as “state sponsors of terrorism”: Syria (1979), Iran (1984), North Korea (2017) and Cuba (2021). Countries that have been removed from the list are Iraq, Libya, former South Yemen and Sudan. The evidence that the US government usually gives to support claims that a country has indeed “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism” is quite scant, to say the least. And yet, Washington DC has (ab)used the designation as a basis to attack all of the aforementioned countries, in addition to dozens of other states around the globe.
Unfortunately, the belligerent thalassocracy usually doesn’t suffer the consequences of its extremely aggressive foreign policy. After the brutal invasion of Iraq, the US claim that the unfortunate Middle Eastern country allegedly had WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) proved to be an unadulterated lie. Still, nobody in the political West suffered any consequences for this, despite their own admission that the accusations against Baghdad were based on “flawed intelligence”. The same people also claimed that the evidence was “rock solid” prior to the truly unprovoked NATO aggression on Iraq. The war didn’t just destroy the Middle Eastern country, directly causing at least one million deaths, but has also resulted in over two decades of (still ongoing) instability.
Still, perhaps the most dangerous consequence of this US foreign policy framework is that the belligerent thalassocracy has already tried using the designation for Russia, which is even more ironic, as the Eurasian giant has been fighting actual (as previously mentioned mostly US-backed) international terrorism, including in Syria, another country the US considers a “terrorist state”. Despite all of this, Washington DC is constantly escalating the magnitude of its hypocrisy, especially in recent months. The best example of this is the terrorist attack that destroyed portions of the Nord Stream pipelines. As several senior Biden administration officials effectively admitted that Washington DC was behind this, including the infamous Victoria Nuland, the US is openly engaging in what can only be called state terrorism.
This is yet another term describing terrorist activities directly supported or even carried out by an intentionally recognized state actor. And it is precisely this that the latest report by a prizewinning US journalist Seymour Hersh confirms. The detailed account of how exactly the US sabotaged the strategically important natural gas pipelines is a clear indicator that the belligerent thalassocracy has upped the ante and is now ready to do virtually anything to prevent normal economic activities of its geopolitical rivals (and not just rivals, as this terrorist act essentially destroyed Europe’s energy security). Hersh’s report also reveals that US vassals (in this case Norway) also took part in the terrorist attack on Russia-built pipelines. Oslo also had a vested interest in seeing the Nord Stream fail, as it has a competing pipeline connecting it to northwestern areas of Europe.
Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar, a giant in global geopolitical analytics, thinks that the report is effectively a leak from Hersh’s Deep State insider, but that it essentially boils down to a futile attempt to hide (or at least trivialize) the decisive role of the CIA and other US intelligence services. He adds that the overfocus on Norway’s role is used as a scapegoat to divert attention from other participants in this terrorist act. Escobar also blasts the European Union, particularly “cowardly Berlin”, for not reacting to what is, in essence, economic warfare against the bloc. However, as he correctly notes, the Norwegian Navy doesn’t have any operational P-8 “Poseidon” (unlike the US) and this maritime patrol aircraft was key in conducting the attack.
While Moscow is still exercising remarkable restraint despite all this, it’s certainly making it clear that it now sees the US as waging a total hybrid war against Russia. Its Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already excluded the idea of negotiations on strategic nuclear weapons with the US, stating that any proposed gestures of goodwill are “unjustified, untimely and uncalled for.” The world is also following suit, as China has also called for Washington DC to “explain itself” regarding the terrorist attack on the pipelines.
Naturally, countries around the globe are aware that the belligerent thalassocracy has essentially opened the Pandora’s Box by directly attacking Russian infrastructure and are certainly worried this could become yet another illegal mainstay of US foreign policy. And indeed, if Washington DC is unconcerned with direct attacks on a country with the most powerful thermonuclear arsenal on the planet, who else can feel safe when having to deal with what Escobar described as the “Rogue Superpower”?
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
The biggest development is an interview that Hersh gave to the Berliner Zeitung. It was published yesterday and contains many new details. For example, Hersh tells his interviewer that the plan was to detonate “eight bombs … near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic sea,” of which only “six…went off.” This is the first confirmation we’ve had anywhere of an obvious point, namely that the operation wasn’t fully successful, and that this is the only reason that Pipe B of Nord Stream 2 escaped intact. He’s also more explicit on the involvement of Denmark and Sweden, saying “I was told that they did what they did [to facilitate the planting of explosives] and they knew what they were doing and they understood what was going on, but maybe nobody ever said ‘yes.’”
Hersh also provides more operational detail:
[T]there was a decompression chamber, and we used a Norwegian submarine hunter. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines. One problem was how to deal with Baltic Sea surveillance. The Baltic is monitored very thoroughly, there’s a lot of freely available data, so we took care of that, there were three or four different people for that. And what was done then is very simple. For 21 years, our Sixth Fleet … has been conducting [BALTOPS] … [F]or the first time in history, the NATO exercise in the Baltic had a new programme. It was to be a twelve-day exercise to drop and detect mines. A number of nations sent out mine teams, one group dropped a mine and another mine team went out to find it and blow it up.
So there was this period of time when things were exploding, and during that time the deep-sea divers could operate and attach the mines to the pipelines. The two pipelines run about a mile apart, they’re a little buried under the silt on the seabed, but they’re not difficult to get to, and the divers had practised it. It only took a couple of hours to place the bombs …
[T]hey did it towards the end of the exercise. But at the last minute, the White House got nervous. The president said he was afraid to go ahead. He changed his mind and gave new orders, so they had the ability to detonate the bombs remotely at any time. You do it with normal sonar, a Raytheon product by the way, you fly over the spot and drop a cylinder. It sends a low-frequency signal, you could say it sounds like a flute, you can set different frequencies.
The fear, however, was that the bombs wouldn’t work if they stayed in the water too long. This is actually what happened with two of the bombs. So there was concern within the group about finding the right way, and we actually had to turn to other intelligence agencies, which I’ve deliberately not written about.
There were still active explosives on the sea bed as the pipes were leaking their gas, which explains why partially complicit Denmark and Sweden closed the whole area and denied all access, until they themselves had removed everything.
Hersh also clarifies further the chronology of Biden’s order, and appears to suggest that at least some of those involved believed they were planting explosives only as part of a negotiating tactic, and that they’d never be used. (How this is to be harmonised with Hersh’s insistence that the sonar trigger was a last-minute plan, I can’t imagine):
Joe Biden decided not to blow them up back in June, it was five months into the war. But in September he ordered it done. The operational staff, the people who do “kinetic” things for the United States, they do what the president says, and they initially thought this was a useful weapon he could use in negotiations. But at some point, after the Russians invaded and then when the operation was completed, the whole thing became increasingly repugnant to the people who were doing it. These were people who worked in top positions in the intelligence services and were well trained. They turned against the project, they thought it was crazy.
Shortly after the attack, after they had done what they were ordered to do, there was a lot of anger about the operation and repudiation among those involved. That’s one of the reasons I learned so much. And I’ll tell you something else. The people in America and Europe who build pipelines know what happened. I’ll tell you something important. The people who own companies that build pipelines all know the story. I didn’t get the story from them, but I quickly learned that they know.
Elsewhere, Hersh says that the discontent with Biden’s attack is specifically within the CIA, where participants in the operation are “appalled that Biden decided to expose Europe to the cold in order to further a war he will not win.”
As I said before, it seems obvious that what happened to Nord Stream is an open secret in security and government circles, and that the truth simply can’t be acknowledged, because nobody in the German government wants to live with the political consequences. The only really interesting detail that all the debunkings have in common, is their refusal to address what I see as the central problem with Hersh’s story. As I said before, he says divers planted explosives at a point where the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines run just one mile apart from each other. This only describes the location of the second cluster of explosions on 26 September. The first explosion hit Pipe A of Nord Stream 2 well to the south, at a point where the two pipelines are perhaps 15 km apart.
The US has turned to Islamist extremists to plan terrorist attacks in Russia and other ex-Soviet republics, Moscow’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said on Monday. A group is being trained at a base in Syria for the purpose, the agency claimed.
“The US military is actively recruiting militants from jihadist groups affiliated with Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS] and Al-Qaeda to commit terrorist attacks in Russia and members of the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS],” the SVR stated, citing “credible reports.”
Established after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIS incorporates some of its former republics, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
According to the SVR, the US has enlisted 60 terrorists who have already been active in the Middle East. They are undergoing training at the Al-Tanf American military base in Syria, where they are learning how to manufacture and use improvised explosive devices, it added.
“Particular attention is paid to planning attacks on well-protected facilities, including foreign diplomatic missions,” the agency stated. It added that Washington is aiming to “deploy the militants as part of small groups to the territory of Russia and the CIS states in near future.” They will then target “diplomats, public officials, law enforcement officers, and military personnel,” the SVR claimed.
“We see that US security agencies have lost all moral principles… Obsessed with the crazy idea of ‘bleeding Russia dry’, Washington strategists presume it is acceptable to directly use terrorists for their dirty purposes,” the agency said. It asserted that “such actions put Washington on a par with the largest international terrorist groups.”
In December, SVR Director Sergey Naryshkin claimed that the White House was pursuing policies to create an “instability belt along Russia’s external perimeter.” Naryshkin had previously stated that the security services in Russia and CIS countries have the common goal of “counteracting Western countries’ destructive actions on the territory of our states.”
The chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Tino Chrupalla, has called for investigative committees to be set up in connection with the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Both the Bundestag and the EU Parliament must investigate whether the US and Norway had actively participated in blowing up the pipelines, he said.
Chrupalla called for an investigation into the claims: “The suspicions of the Pulitzer Prize winner must be investigated.” All the serious questions must now be “answered by committees of inquiry”. The Bundestag has “a right to know what knowledge the federal government had”.
The AfD boss underscored that such an inquiry should establish whether government officials were involved in the planning. “Were government officials privy to the planning of the attack?”
Biden, but also Scholz, Greens exposed
According to Hersh, after some “wobbling” Olaf Scholz decided to be on the American team. He was referring to a meeting between the German Chancellor and US President Joe Biden on February 7 last year. At the joint press conference, the American head of state said about the then imminent war in Ukraine: “If Russia invades, there will be no more Nord Stream 2. We will put an end to this.”
LNG deliveries from the US have increased by 143 percent from the previous year which has been a catastrophe for the climate, critics argue. “The biggest hypocrisy in decoupling Europe from Russian oil and gas supplies concerns environmental policy. The production and transport of LNG from the USA results in a CO2 footprint that is twice as large as that of conventional Russian gas,” according to Le Monde Diplomatique.
The sabotage act to enforce the “rules-based international order”, furthermore triggered a massive release of methane causing major damage to the environment, to marine life, including to dolphins, whales and plants. This fact has been of no interest to various EU Green party supporters nor to Greta Thunberg.
The AfD parliamentary group leader pointed out that the US had attacked an ally: “Has the leading power of NATO carried out an attack on our country’s vital critical infrastructure in European waters?” If so, one would have to question whether the alliance guarantees security in Europe or rather endangers it. The withdrawal of all US troops should be the consequence.”
According to Chrupalla, all the findings of national authorities should be laid out before the European Parliament: “The European states must not put up with such violent interference. They are even less allowed to participate in it.”
Norway profits from German loss
Until Wednesday, the investigative journalist had always been known as “a legend” in leading German media screeds – as a famous sleuth successfully uncovering numerous American state crimes. Since his [Nord Stream] revelations, he has become “controversial” however.
The treatment of the Hersh revelations in German mainstream media – either totally ignoring them or blaming the Kremlin – will most probably give the already low credibility of the “leading outlets” their final deathblow.
Moreover, it appears that Germany’s most trusted “ally” had no difficulty in persuading Norway as a member of the European “community of values” to take part in a criminal endeavour in order to sell its energy exports to Germany much more profitably.
But in order to do so, Norway became actively involved in an act of terrorism, breach of international law, as well as a breach of the United Nations Charter.
When US Special Forces covert actions in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras included mining the coast of Nicaragua to stop locals from fishing and other marine activities, the case was successfully brought to the International Court of Justice in June 1986. This means that the International Court of Justice, which was established by the UN Charter, has jurisdiction in this case, legal scholars believe.
Following the sabotage, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden launched separate inquiries into the attack, further highlighting the disunity of EU members. Sweden was reportedly the first to leave the planned joint investigation team; Denmark followed suit. To date, no European country has made its findings public.
Hersh’s revelations are especially a challenge for conservatives and right-wing Atlanticists. Because if Hersh’s comprehensive account of the events, which is based on high-ranking sources in Washington, is correct, then “there can be no other consequence than the demand for the withdrawal of all American troops and military bases from Germany,” according to Wolfgang Hübner, a long-standing city councilor and parliamentary group leader of the Bürger für Frankfurt (BFF).
Legal hurdles for team Biden
The executive branch under Biden may have unilaterally decided to wage war on Germany, but there are many legal problems associated with their project, such as the failure to inform Congress or even the powerful congressional Gang of Eight.
According to Hersch, the US Navy performed the destruction of a foreign government’s property at the direction of President Biden. Claiming that they were just following orders would not go far in court, since bypassing Congress is evidently illegal.
Specifically, the Gang of Eight includes the leaders of each of the two parties from both the US Senate and House of Representatives, and the chairs and ranking minority members of both the Senate Committee and House Committee for intelligence as set forth by 50 U.S.C. § 3093(c)(2).
It is also telling that US military service chiefs did not raise the alarm when the Biden team decided to blow up Nord Stream.
Well before Hersch’s report, Norwegian investigative reporter, Alf R Jacobsen, had written a detailed analysis of the Nord Stream sabotage. In October 2022, Jacobsen challenged the idea of Russia’s involvement in the blasts. According to him, Hersh’s piece is credible.
Attempts by the US State Department to brush off Seymour Hersh’s article about the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines as “nonsense” are overt lies that display shocking ignorance of American history, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Friday.
The veteran investigative journalist reported on Wednesday that the US was behind the destruction of the Baltic Sea pipelines in September 2022. American divers planted charges under the cover of a NATO exercise, and a Norwegian airplane detonated them remotely when the time came, Hersh wrote.
“It would not be typical for us to engage allies and partners on something that is utter and complete nonsense,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday, answering a question about Hersh’s article.
Zakharova said she was astonished by Price’s audacity to call “nonsense” what US President Joe Biden and Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland openly described as their preferred outcome.
“The US is once again lying live on air, openly mocking journalists who asked fully justified questions,” Zakharova said.
Washington also has a history of targeting civilian petrochemical infrastructure, Zakharova noted, citing the 1983 CIA sabotage of a pipeline in Nicaragua as an example.
“You did this, you do this, and you will do this until you’re stopped,” the spokeswoman added.
As for bringing allies and partners into “nonsense,” Zakharova argued that this was precisely what “trans-Atlantic solidarity” means in practice, referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as one example.
“Twenty years ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell brought to the UN Security Council a vial of something, and called [on] allies and partners to invade a sovereign state, without any evidence, over claims that proved to be utter nonsense. Ned, do you know your own department’s history?” Zakharova said. “I have no doubts that at the State Department they are bad with the history of their own country. That’s why we are where we are.”
Explosions that damaged both Nord Stream pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm cut off the flow of Russian natural gas to Germany. US officials tried to blame Russia for the blasts, while expressing delight at the destruction and calling it an “opportunity” for Europe. The White House has denounced Hersh’s report as “utterly false and complete fiction.”
Zakharova noted that Denmark and Sweden had refused Russian offers to assist with the investigation, while Norway declined to provide aid citing EU sanctions, adding that this shows the three governments were not interested in finding out the truth, but rather covering it up.
China has demanded that the United States “explain itself to the world” if the revelations in Seymour Hersh’s story about US intel being responsible for destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines are true.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist published an article this week in which he asserted that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation.
According to Hersh’s sources, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise and were detonated three months later with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy.
One source told Hersh that the plotters knew the covert operation was an “act of war,” with some in the CIA and State Department warning, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”
Now Beijing is demanding that the White House address the issue, seemingly unimpressed with the Biden administration’s rather weak response to merely label the story “false”.
Earlier today, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning asserted that Washington would have to bear responsibility if the report is confirmed as accurate.
“If the conclusions of the investigation are true, then the US behavior is unacceptable,” the diplomat told reporters, adding that the US would need to “explain itself to the world community.”
The Kremlin also responded to the report by demanding a fresh international investigation into the attack, which was preceded by both Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland asserting that the pipelines would be taken out if Russia invaded Ukraine.
Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Hersh’s article showed “the need for an open international investigation into this unprecedented attack on this critical infrastructure.”
“It’s a very important piece, which… must provoke the acceleration of the international probe. But we, on the contrary, witness attempts to silently wind down such international investigation,” he added.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is also calling for a full inquiry.
“The Pulitzer Prize winner’s suspicions must be investigated,” wrote co-chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Tino Chrupalla.
“Has NATO’s leading power carried out an attack on our country’s vital critical infrastructure in European waters? Then one would have to question whether the alliance guarantees security in Europe or rather endangers it. The consequence would be the withdrawal of all U.S. troops.”
Ever heard of Monkey Werx? He hosts a You Tube channel that focuses on tracking U.S. civilian and military flights. Sounds pretty innocuous and boring. No more. Turns out that Monkey Werx provided a video report last September (September 30th to be precise) that confirms part of Sy Hersh’s account of the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology. Once in place, the delayed timing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be accidentally triggered by the complex mix of ocean background noises throughout the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea—from near and distant ships, underwater drilling, seismic events, waves and even sea creatures. To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low frequency tonal sounds—much like those emitted by a flute or a piano—that would be recognized by the timing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trigger the explosives. (“You want a signal that is robust enough so that no other signal could accidentally send a pulse that detonated the explosives,” I was told by Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy at MIT. Postol, who has served as the science adviser to the Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Operations, said the issue facing the group in Norway because of Biden’s delay was one of chance: “The longer the explosives are in the water the greater risk there would be of a random signal that would launch the bombs.”)
On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.
And here is the Monkey Werx report from September 30th (relevant info starts at the 2 minute mark) tracking that P8 Poseidon:
There still are some people in the intelligence community who are patriots and are alarmed by Biden’s lawless behavior. I imagine that the Biden Administration will launch a witch hunt for the intelligence officers who alerted Sy Hersh to this story. According to the Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war on another country. Joe Biden has usurped that authority and carried out an act of war against a NATO ally (Germany). The potential ramifications of this act include the heightened risk of the U.S. starting a shooting war with Russia.
“Beatles” ISIS member was tried in the US was to conceal his previous links to British intelligence and his role in their regime-change efforts in Syria
In January 2023, reports emerged that Alexanda Kotey, known as “Jihadi George” and one of the four British ISIS members collectively known as the “Beatles,” had disappeared from the custody of the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
In 2022, Kotey was convicted in a US court and sentenced to life in prison for the abduction and detention of multiple western hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015, including journalists James Foley, John Cantlie, and Steven Sotloff, and aid workers Kayla Jean Mueller, Peter Kassig, David Haines, and Alan Henning, most of whom were later executed by ISIS.
A BOP spokesperson refused to provide details of Kotey’s whereabouts or why he had been moved, stating only that there are “several reasons” why an inmate may be referred to as “not in BOP custody,” including for “court hearings, medical treatment or for other reasons. We do not provide specific information on the status of inmates who are not in the custody of the BOP for safety, security, or privacy reasons.”
Kotey’s links with British intelligence
The refusal of BOP officials to provide details of Kotey’s whereabouts raises fears that Kotey may be able to escape facing justice for his crimes. This is due to Kotey’s previous links to British intelligence, which sought to use UK-based Islamist extremists such as Kotey as proxies in the 2011 US-led regime-change war against the Syrian government.
Kotey’s links to British intelligence are evidenced by the convoluted effort to prosecute him after his 2018 detention by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Although Kotey held UK citizenship like three of his alleged victims, Haines, Henning, and Cantlie, British officials insisted that Kotey and fellow Beatle Elshafee Elsheikh be tried in US rather than UK courts.
A review of events surrounding Kotey’s case reveals that prosecuting the West Londoner in the US was necessary to avoid revealing his and fellow Beatles’ links to British intelligence.
Laying the foundations for ISIS
Kotey traveled to Syria in August 2012 with fellow Beatle Muhammad Emzawi, known as “Jihadi John,” as part of a “terror-funnel” established by British intelligence. Upon arrival in Syria, Kotey and Emzawi immediately joined an armed group fighting against the Syrian government known as Katibat al-Muhajireen.
In November 2012, Emzawi participated in the abduction of American journalist James Foley and British journalist John Cantlie near the town of Binnish in northwestern Syria.
Kotey, Emzawi, and Elsheikh then served as prison guards for Foley, Cantlie, and other western hostages. Many members of Katibat al-Muhajireen – including the trio – then helped lay the foundation for the rise of ISIS by joining the terror group when it was established in April 2013.
Foley was brutally murdered by Emzawi in August 2014. In a video recording of the murder, a black-clad and masked Emzawi beheaded Foley, who was kneeling in the desert sand in an orange Guantanamo-style prisoner’s jumpsuit. Sotloff, Haines, Hennig, and Kassig were murdered subsequently, while Cantlie’s whereabouts are still unknown.
Terrorism researcher Raffaello Pantucci reports that Kotey and Elsheikh, “were longstanding figures of concern to the security services. Involved in a West London network that has long fed young British men to jihadi battlefields and created terrorist cells back in the UK.”
The Times reports that according to court papers filed in Kotey’s case, he first tried to travel to Syria with three other Britons via the Channel tunnel in February 2012 but was denied entry at the Turkish border and deported.
A month later, Kotey tried again but failed to reach Syria by flying from Barcelona. He returned to London through St Pancras station, where police arrested him for carrying a “lock-blade knife.”
The Times reported further that, “In August 2012 Kotey tried for a third time to make it to Syria by travelling overland across Europe with Emwazi. He has disclosed that the pair were detained at least twice during the two-month journey, although it is unclear in which countries. Each time, it seems, they were allowed to continue on their way.”
A spokesman for the SDF claimed that Kotey entered Turkey in 2012 “even though the Turkish intelligence had his jihadi record. He gained two months’ residence in Turkey and then he was allowed to go to Syria and he entered Syrian soil through the border crossing at Bab al Hawa.”
After years of fighting for Katibat al-Muhajireen and then ISIS, Kotey and Elsheikh were detained by the SDF in 2018 as the Caliphate faced defeat by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies on the one hand, and US and SDF forces on the other, during the race to control Syria’s northeastern oil and grain producing regions. Emzawi had already been killed in a US airstrike in 2015.
Trial in the US instead of UK
By the time of Kotey’s detention in 2018, British police had long been collecting evidence of Kotey’s terrorist activities. As a result, the Guardianreported that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had charged Kotey with five counts of murder and eight counts of hostage-taking in February 2016, and issued warrants for his arrest.
However, once Kotey was in SDF custody, British officials took extraordinary legal measures to ensure he would not be brought back to the UK for trial, insisting instead that Kotey be tried in a US court.
The British Home Office then revoked Kotey’s British citizenship, making it more difficult to prosecute him in the UK. According to Ken Macdonald, a former UK director of public prosecutions, stripping Kotey of his citizenship appeared to be an attempt by the government “to duck responsibility for bringing this Briton to justice.”
The Guardianreports that UK Security Minister Ben Wallace claimed to parliament in July 2018 that the UK did not have enough evidence to try Kotey and a US trial was the only option. However, a legal source with knowledge of the case claimed that the “British families of those murdered by ‘the Beatles’ were misled by UK government officials” and told that “if these men are not sent to the US, we won’t be able to prosecute them.”
The Telegraphreported in 2018 that according to a leaked letter from British Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the Metropolitan Police and FBI had been investigating Kotey’s activities in Syria for the past four years, “collecting more than 600 witness statements in a criminal inquiry involving 14 other countries,” and that there was “intelligence” implicating Kotey in the “kidnap and murder” of two Britons and three Americans.
Britain’s support of terrorists in Syria
UK officials were correct, however, in saying to the victims’ families that if Kotey and Elsheikh were not sent to the US, they could not be prosecuted. This was because British intelligence had been directly supporting Katibat al-Muhajireen, the armed group Kotey, Elsheikh, and Emzawi initially fought for during the time they participated in the abduction and captivity of numerous western hostages.
Two previous efforts to convict British citizens on terrorism charges for their involvement with Katibat al-Muhajireen had fallen apart for this specific reason, illustrating British intelligence support for the armed group.
The first was the 2015 terror trial of Swedish citizen Bherlin Gildo, who according to the Daily Mail fought for Katibat al-Muhajireen and later for the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front.
The Guardianreports that after Gildo abandoned the conflict, he was detained while transiting through Heathrow Airport. He was accused by British authorities of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training between 31 August, 2012, and 1 March, 2013, as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.
However, the terror trial collapsed “after fears of deep embarrassment” to the British security services. This was because, as Gildo’s lawyer explained, “British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he [Gildo] was.”
Another example is former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, who was also tried on terror charges for assisting Katibat al-Muhajireen. Begg traveled to Syria several times in 2012 and provided physical training to foreign fighters from the group in Aleppo, as reported by Foreign Policy. Begg made his latest trip to Syria in December 2012.
As a result, Begg was detained by UK authorities in 2014 and accused of attending a terrorist training camp. The Guardianreported, however, that Begg was freed after British intelligence officials from MI5, “belatedly gave police and prosecutors a series of documents that detailed the agency’s extensive contacts with him before and after his trips to Syria,” and which showed that MI5 told Begg he could continue his work for the so-called opposition in Syria “unhindered.”
It was therefore clear that any terror trial of Kotey and Elsheikh in the UK would collapse for the same reasons as the previous cases, leaving UK officials no choice but to have them tried in the US instead.
In the letter leaked to the Telegraph, former Home Secretary Sajid Javid explained that “the UK does not currently intend to request, nor actively encourage, the transfer of Kotey and El-sheikh to the UK to support future UK-based prosecution.” Showing that he was under pressure as a result of this decision, Javid wrote further to the letter’s addressee, “I do understand your frustration on this subject.”
The Telegraph notes further that, “despite repeated ministerial assurances that British jihadists traveling to Syria would be held to account in British courts, the Home Secretary’s letter discloses concerns that laws in this country may not be robust enough to ensure successful prosecution. He believes American terrorism laws are more effective.”
In other words, British law was not robust enough to convict someone on terrorism charges for fighting with a terrorist group the UK intelligence services themselves supported.
The capital punishment loophole
Despite claims that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Kotey in the UK, any successful conviction in the US would have relied on evidence collected by UK prosecutors, which would have to be shared with their US counterparts.
This was problematic, however, because US officials had not provided assurances that Kotey would not face the death penalty if convicted. Because the death penalty is banned in the UK, it was contrary to long standing UK policy to provide evidence that could contribute to a death sentence.
Home Secretary Javid nevertheless approved providing evidence against Kotey and Elsheikh to US prosecutors after the pair were transferred from SDF to US custody.
House of Lords member Alex Carlile, a former reviewer of terrorism legislation, described Javid’s willingness to approve this as “a dramatic change of policy by a minister, secretly, without any discussion in parliament,” and that “Britain has always said that it will pass information and intelligence, in appropriate cases, provided there is no death penalty. That is a decades-old policy and it is not for the home secretary to change that policy.”
This led Elsheikh’s mother to sue the British government, fearing that if her son and Kotey were convicted in a US court, they would be executed. The case eventually went to the British Supreme Court, which according to the New York Times, “unanimously ruled that the British home secretary’s decision to transfer personal data to law enforcement authorities abroad for use in capital criminal proceedings without any safeguards violated a data protection law passed in 2018.”
As a result, US Attorney General William Barr belatedly gave the assurance in August 2020 that Kotey and Elsheikh would not face the death penalty, allowing the sharing of evidence and the prosecution to move forward.
A testimony of the west’s support of ISIS
In 2022, Kotey and Elsheikh were finally convicted and sentenced to life in prison. At the time, the Washington Post explained that the successful prosecution of Elsheikh and Kotey had been unlikely, given that at time of their capture, it was “unclear whether an American trial would happen at all. A federal prosecution was met with opposition at the highest levels of government on two continents.”
While the reason for Kotey’s recent disappearance from US Bureau of Prisons custody is unclear, the insistence of UK officials to have him and fellow Beatle Elsheikh prosecuted in a US rather than UK court, and the reluctance of both governments to try the two ISIS militants at all, indicates that British planners wished to hide their previous support for extremists who helped lay the foundation for ISIS.
While ISIS is widely understood to have emerged in Iraq, evidence continues to emerge showing that officials in London and Washington played the crucial role in the rise of the notorious terror group as part of a broader effort to topple the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.
Locals and medical personnel from the Syrian city of Douma in the Damascus countryside confirmed on 2 February during a press conference in the country’s Foreign Ministry headquarters that the alleged 2018 chemical attack on the city was, indeed, staged.
This follows the release of a new report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on 27 January, which once again renewed the accusation that Damascus was behind a 2018 chlorine gas attack on civilians in Douma.
“I live 400 meters from the place of the alleged incident, and I only learned of its occurrence the next day through social media,” Syrian lawyer Muhammad al-Naasan said during the press conference.
Another testimony is that of Dr. Hassan Oyoun, an ambulance worker at Douma Hospital, who claimed that “information was published a day before the alleged incident that it was necessary to prepare for an event that would result in a large number of injuries.”
This confirms that “prior preparations” were underway for the staging of the attack, Oyoun said, referring to the incident as a “fabricated play that was filmed.”
“What the terrorists announced about 800 injuries from chemical substances is incorrect, and the number of people who visited the hospital that day did not exceed 35,” he added.
According to Dr. Mumtaz al-Hanash, a Douma local, Douma Hospital announced just one day after the alleged attack that no chemically induced deaths were recorded whatsoever. He went on to say that the “photographed cases” did not provide evidence that chlorine, or any other weaponized chemical, was used.
An imam and preacher at a local mosque, Sheikh Ratib Naji, said: “We did not see with our own eyes any injured or dead, as they claimed, and those whom the terrorists claimed were dead, their bodies did not appear, and when we demanded them, they assaulted us.”
Syria’s permanent representative at the Hague-based chemical weapons watchdog, Milad Attiya, affirmed that Damascus does not recognize the OPCW investigation team’s third and latest report, as it rejected the last two. Attiya added that the report relies heavily on western sources, as well as groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the White Helmets, an Al-Qaeda affiliated rescue organization with links to organ trafficking networks in Syria.
Since 2013, armed groups in Syria have attempted to pin chemical attacks on the government to instigate internationally-led regime change operations against it. This comes in the form of staged attacks, or actual false-flag chemical attacks which leave many dead and are designed to implicate Damascus – as was the case in Ghouta in 2013 and in Khan Sheikhoun in 2017.
On 28 January, the Syrian government released a statement rejecting the OPCW report, which it said ignored “objective information which was provided by some … experts … and former OPCW inspectors with knowledge and expertise,” referring to the fact that the organization suppressed the findings of its initial report on Douma, as revealed by WikiLeaks in 2019.
The Ukrainian military are storing Western weapons in nuclear power plants in the hope that Russia will strike them. However, as Russia is unlikely to make this mistake, it cannot be ruled out that Kiev will stage a false flag operation to force direct Western intervention and increase the supply of weapons.
According to the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryshkin, HIMARS missiles and other foreign air defence systems, as well as large-calibre artillery ammunition, are deployed at Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
“There is credible information that Ukrainian troops are stockpiling the Western-supplied weapons and ammunition on the territory of nuclear power plants,” Naryshkin said, according to a statement on the intelligence service’s website.
According to the intelligence chief, several cars loaded with “lethal cargo” were delivered by rail to the Rovno Nuclear Power Plant in western Ukraine during the last week of December alone.
“They rely on the calculation that the Russian Armed Forces would not strike nuclear power plants because they realise the danger of a nuclear disaster,” Naryshkin said.
He expressed the hope that no one in Kiev would deliberately think of blowing up the nuclear power plants in a false flag operation. False flag operations are often used by international terrorists, as seen on a frequent basis during the peak of the Syrian war, or by the US to justify their own invasions and interventions.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces often receive weapons that are of very poor quality. This fact alone heightens the risk of an accidental explosion, something that could unleash a nuclear catastrophe and be blamed on Moscow.
Alarmingly, in addition to nuclear power plants, the Ukrainian military also uses residential buildings to house Western weapons. Ukrainian soldiers are fully aware of the fact that the Russian military does not strike civilian populations. The Russian military does not strike at nuclear plants, especially as any spill over can directly affect Russian citizens.
Ukrainian soldiers on the other hand have consistently used civilians as human shields, even before the Russian military operation began in 2022, as reported by the United Nations. The Ukrainian military is desperate for more weapons, tanks, howitzers, and ammunition, and such an incident could unite the West in providing Kiev with what it demands.
Ukraine’s nuclear plants are located near the border with Romania, Slovakia and Poland. Therefore, delivering military equipment from the West is a relatively straightforward process. According to intelligence data, only in the last week of December, several railway wagons with “lethal cargo” were delivered from abroad via the Rafalovka railway station to the Rivne nuclear power plant, located only 170km from the Polish border.
None-the-less, according to Andrei Golovatyuk, a colonel in the Russian army reserve, Moscow will certainly find a way to destroy ammunition and Western weapons stores without endangering the lives and health of the civilian population.
“They are doing this on purpose so that the Russian armed forces cannot shell their weapons depots. But our army will certainly not do that to avoid damaging the nuclear power plant,” he added.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky, claimed that his country has never used nuclear power plants to store weapons.
“Ukraine has never stored any weapons on NPP territory, as falsely claimed by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. On the contrary, the Russian Federation seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and keeps its military there,” he said on Twitter, alluding that a military presence and weapons storage is the same thing.
Podolyak said that Kiev remained “open to inspecting bodies, including the IAEA” and that “Russian lies are aimed to justify their provocations.”
However, it does question what kind of “justification” Russia gets for its military operation by claiming that Ukraine stores weapons in nuclear power plants. Moscow obviously gains no “justification” and rather its justification is hinged on Kiev’s unrelenting fascistic policies towards minorities since 2014.
Rather, it is more likely that Podolyak is making nonsensical statements as Kiev is stunned that their false flag operation cannot be implemented because Moscow has already called it out. The Kiev regime is currently desperate for Western weaponry, particularly tanks, and was likely hoping that a nuclear incident could force the issue, or even better, force a direct intervention.
Podolyak tweeted on January 21 that “Today’s indecision is killing more of our people. Every day of delay is the death of Ukrainians. Think faster.”
However, even if US and German-made tanks start arriving in Ukraine, the situation is already too late for the Ukrainian military because it struggles to maintain a semblance of order in the face of Russia’s unrelenting onslaught. Rather, Kiev is responsible for the death of Ukrainians as it refuses to find a peace with Moscow. Therefore, it cannot be entirely discounted that as Ukraine becomes more desperate, it may resort to reckless measures, such as false flag operations on nuclear power plants.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Ukrainian servicemen have told Russian security forces that snipers from the United States and the United Kingdom have been sent to Potemkin Island (Ostriv Velykyi Potomkin) near Kherson to kill civilians in order to pass them off as victims of the Russian Armed Forces, a Russian law enforcement source told Sputnik.
“According to information received from sources in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, an American-British group of mercenaries, mostly snipers, drove to Bolshoy Potemkin Island in the Kherson region in order to terrorize the Russian-speaking population,” the source said.
“The victims of the mercenaries’ murders are supposed to be passed off as those killed by the Russian army.”
In early January, a video started circulating on Ukrainian websites showing how Ukrainian militants allegedly raised the Ukrainian flag on Potemkin Island, controlled by Russian troops. Subsequently, the footage was reported to have been filmed in a “gray zone.”
A Sputnik correspondent visited the island on December 5 and confirmed that it was under the control of Russian troops. One of the Russian soldiers on the island told Sputnik in an interview that the Ukrainian video showing the alleged raising of the Ukrainian flag was a fake.
Earlier Friday, French media reported that the US officials were also urging the Ukrainian regime to prepare for a counteroffensive against Russian forces as opposed to clinging to the town of Bakhmut.
The latest comes as reports detailed on Wednesday that the Biden administration was considering providing Ukraine with weapons necessary to target the Crimean Peninsula.
… As devastating as it may be, at a certain moment in time, a horrible chapter was given an exceptionally meta-historical status. Its ‘factuality’ was sealed by draconian laws and its reasoning was secured by social and political settings. The Holocaust became the new Western religion. Unfortunately, it is the most sinister religion known to man. It is a license to kill, to flatten, no nuke, to wipe, to rape, to loot and to ethnically cleanse. … Read full article
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