Joining Some Dots on the Skripal Case: Part 2 – Four “Invisible” Clues
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | June 2, 2018
Having stated in Part 1 why I believe the official story does not hold water, I want in this piece to take a look at four important aspects of the case. However, what is particularly remarkable about them is not so much the aspects themselves, but rather the fact that they seem to have been either:
- Ignored altogether or
- Quietly forgotten
Yet in each instance they are clearly significant aspects, and so the fact that they are being ignored or forgotten, together with the official story being implausible, only goes to arouse suspicions that they may be crucial pointers to what really happened on 4th March.
Below are four of what I would consider the most important aspects that fit into this category:
The Invisible Mr Miller
Three days after the Salisbury incident, the Daily Telegraph published an article which included the following details:
“A security consultant who has worked for the company that compiled the controversial dossier on Donald Trump was close to the Russian double agent poisoned last weekend, it has been claimed. The consultant, who The Telegraph is declining to identify, lived close to Col Skripal and is understood to have known him for some time. Col Skripal, who is in intensive care and fighting for his life after an assassination attempt on Sunday, was recruited by MI6 when he worked for the British embassy in Estonia, according to the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency.”
The security consultant, whom the Daily Telegraph declined to identify, was not only the man who recruited Mr Skripal for MI6 in 1995, but was also his “handler” in Salisbury (which was presumably the reason that Mr Skripal was settled there).
We also know a number of other interesting facts: That the two men met regularly in a restaurant in the City; that Mr Skripal was still working for British Intelligence; and that the company that the handler was working for was Orbis Business Intelligence, the private firm owned by the ex-MI6 officer, Christopher Steele, who is said to have “authored” the so-called “Trump Dossier”.
This is obviously all highly relevant to the case. And yet just a day after that piece appeared in The Daily Telegraph (and perhaps because of it), the British Government slapped a D-notice on all reporting in the British media of the handler and his connection to Mr Skripal. This included not naming him, but of course D-Notices only apply to domestic media, and in any case by that time CNN had in fact named him as Pablo Miller.
All of the information above is out there in public. And yet the British Government has banned the media from discussing it further. That is indeed very odd, not least of which because the media could, if they so wished, easily use the connections between Mr Skripal, Mr Miller and Mr Steele as a reason to bolster the official narrative (I’m not saying that it would be credible, but it doesn’t take too much of a leap of the imagination to see the headlines appearing in the compliant media: “Did Putin want Skripal dead because he knew too much about the Trump/Russia collusion?”).
Yet, the fact that there is radio silence on these connections is bound to raise questions as to their significance, and whether they point to another motive entirely behind this case.
The Invisible People From the Market Walk
In the first few days after the poisoning, much was made of two people who were seen walking through the Market Walk, in the direction of the bench where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned. According to the CCTV camera, this was at 15:47 on 4th March, which was approximately 16 minutes before one witness said she saw them collapsed on the park bench.
Many reports at first claimed that this pair, seen on the image at the top of this piece, were the Skripals. Yet although the image and the brief footage is not particularly clear, what is clear is that this most certainly was not Sergei and Yulia Skripal. I am not 100% sure whether the person nearest the camera is a male or female. He/she looks very clearly female to me, but I know some people who have disagreed with this and are convinced by the way that he/she walks and his/her build, that it is a man. Yet one thing is for sure: whoever this person is, it is not Yulia Skripal.
Of course, these two may not be important to the case at all. Yet given the next point below, I’d say that at the very least they are “persons of interest”. And yet, so far as I know, there was no ongoing call for information about who they might be, and certainly no national manhunt. If they have been found and eliminated from enquiries, the media, which had published pictures of them, had a duty to inform the public of this in a satisfactory way. Yet to my knowledge, they did not do so, but instead went very quiet about them. Indeed, if you type in some combination of CCTV, Skripals, Market Walk into a search engine, you are unlikely to find any references to them in the media after about 10th March. One might be tempted to think that their very existence has been quietly “forgotten”.
The Invisible Red Bag
In the CCTV footage mentioned above, the person nearest the camera, who is not Yulia Skripal, is seen carrying a red bag. This is very interesting for a couple of reasons:
Firstly, one of the witnesses had this to say about the female she saw on the bench:
“She was slumped over on the man’s shoulder. To be honest, I thought they might be homeless but they were perhaps better dressed. I just thought this is weird, especially as she was clearly quite a bit younger than him. She had a red bag at her feet.”
Secondly, that witness testimony is confirmed by a rather long-range photograph which appeared in a number of places. In the Evening Standard, it is accompanied by the following caption:
“Police put a red bag inside a police evidence bag immediately after the nerve agent attack on a Russian spy. Officers previously issued CCTV of a woman clutching a red bag.”
The red bag is therefore a very significant piece of evidence. It was taken away by police, and the media have not mentioned it since. What was in it? Have we been told? Or has it been quietly incinerated?
The Invisible Mr Bailey
Another person who is a key part of the case, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, seems also to have disappeared. He was released from hospital on 22nd March, and a statement put out in his name included the following request:
“I do understand and appreciate the attention on this incident, but I would ask people to put themselves in my shoes. I want to respectfully ask the media for privacy for me and my family at this time and for no intrusion into my private life, so that my family and I can try to come to terms with what has happened.”
That seems entirely reasonable. Had I been in the same situation, I wouldn’t have wanted the media intruding.
However, this was well over two months ago, and since then we have heard nothing from Mr Bailey. We’ve heard from Yulia Skripal, whose condition was clearly much worse than his, and who also requested that her privacy be respected in the statement released on her behalf. But we’ve heard nothing from Mr Bailey.
Part of the reason that this is so curious is that there is one vital piece of the case that has never been properly explained. Where was he actually poisoned?
All initial reports claimed that he was poisoned at the park bench in The Maltings. Then in a radio interview on 9th March, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Ian Blair, stated that he was actually poisoned at Mr Skripal’s house. That might have been the end of the matter, were it not for the fact that subsequent reports then swung backwards and forwards between the bench and the house as the place of poisoning.
Why couldn’t they get the story straight? I mean, it must be one of the easiest parts of the whole case to establish. I’m sure that GPS tracking could throw up an answer. Or alternatively, couldn’t we just hear from Mr Bailey himself? How difficult would that be? Yet the fact that we haven’t heard, and that the issue has not been settled, is surely very odd indeed.
Personally, I find it strange that he would have been called to the incident at The Maltings. He is a member of Wiltshire Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID), and for the first 24 hours there was no suspicion of a crime having taken place, it being thought that the pair on the bench had overdosed on Fentanyl. Then again, I find Lord Blair’s claim, that he was poisoned at the house, equally unconvincing. Again, why would a member of CID have gone to the house of someone who was suspected of having overdosed on a park bench on Fentanyl? A third scenario, that he was at both places, is of course even more unlikely.
So how does one process this? Given that Detective Sergeant Bailey has not been interviewed by the media to confirm where, when and how he was poisoned; given the fact that the authorities and the media appear unable or unwilling to confirm this most straightforward of facts; and given that neither The Maltings or Mr Skripal’s house seem to be wholly plausible, both for the reason given above, but also because this raises the question of why others were not poisoned at those locations, I would submit that the most reasonable view to take – until evidence confirms otherwise – is that Detective Sergeant Bailey was poisoned neither at the bench nor the house, but somewhere else altogether.
These are all important aspects of the case. Yet I am convinced that there is another even bigger aspect, which begins to join the dots together. I hope to discuss this in Part 3.
Some of my previous pieces on the Skripal Case:
♦ 30 Questions That Journalists Should be Asking About the Skripal Case
♦ 20 More Questions That Journalists Should be Asking About the Skripal Case
♦ The Skripal Case: 20 New Questions That Journalists Might Like to Start Asking
♦ The Lady and the Curiously Absent Suspect — Yet Another 20 Questions on the Skripal Case
♦ The Slowly Building Anger in the UK at the Government’s Handling of the Skripal Case
♦ The Three Most Important Aspects of the Skripal Case so Far … and Where They Might be Pointing
♦ A Bucketful of Novichok
♦ What Would Sherlock Holmes Have Made of the Government’s Explanation of the Case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal?
Joining Some Dots on the Skripal Case: Part 1 – An Official Story That Doesn’t Hold Water
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | June 1, 2018
I have asked a lot of questions in relation to the Skripal case and many, if not most, are still unanswered. However, I want in this piece to go further than asking questions, and to start to join a few dots together. There is much to say, and rather than doing it in one long piece, which only three people will have the attention span to sit through, I want to do it over a number of articles. Probably four or five. We shall see.
When I say that I am hoping to join some dots together, please note that what I am not attempting to do is state anything conclusively. Rather, I am simply advancing a theory, based on what I have observed so far, and I do so in the full knowledge that there may well be things I have missed, facts which I am as yet unaware of, and other facts which are still to be revealed. These things may well blow any theory I advance apart.
But before I get to that, there is a question that must first be asked: Why is a theory needed in the first place? It’s not as if there isn’t an official one out there. Indeed there is. In which case, why the need for another theory to explain what happened?
The reason is that the official story, put forward by the British Government, is wholly lacking in credibility. It has actually come as a surprise to me just how many people there are out there who don’t buy the official story. Anecdotally, I would say that those looking at the official narrative and wondering how on earth it stacks up includes many who would perhaps not normally question the official line on things.
And so attempting to come up with another theory of what happened has nothing to do with advancing what is usually called a “conspiracy theory”. If the claims of the official story did match the facts, then advancing an entirely different theory could well be seen as a conspiracy theory. But since the claims made by the British Government and in the compliant media do not stack up, this is simply a case of seeking an alternative theory that tries to make more sense of the known facts.
But what is it about the Government story that makes it lack credibility? There are a number of things, but let’s just keep this simple. Let’s begin by looking at what it alleges. This can best be summed up by the words of the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, in the statement she made to the House of Commons on 14th March 2018:
“Mr Speaker, on Monday I set out that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Novichok: a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia. Based on this capability, combined with their record of conducting state sponsored assassinations – including against former intelligence officers whom they regard as legitimate targets – the UK government concluded it was highly likely that Russia was responsible for this reckless and despicable act. And there were only two plausible explanations.
Either this was a direct act by the Russian State against our country. Or conceivably, the Russian government could have lost control of a military-grade nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.”
Leaving aside Mrs May’s allegations for a moment, any impartial observer would immediately notice something odd about this. Her statement was made on 14th March. This was just 10 days since the Skripals were poisoned. At that time, the investigation had hardly begun, and had not yet established any of the following basic facts:
- Where the Skripals were poisoned
- When the Skripals were poisoned
- How they were poisoned
- Who it was that poisoned them.
In other words, she reached conclusions before the establishing of facts, and it goes without saying that this is the very opposite of a rational approach. Indeed, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle warned us through his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes:
“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
But what of her actual claims? The statement that Russia has a record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations is entirely irrelevant to establishing guilt in this case. Past behaviour can be useful evidence to support a case, but guilt must always be proved on the basis of the facts and evidence in the case at hand, and on them alone. Anything else is simply dangerous and wrong.
Which means that the Government’s case essentially relies on just two parts:
- That Mr Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, along with Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, were poisoned by the military grade nerve agent, A-234 (one of the so-called “Novichok” nerve agents).
- That because this substance was developed in Russia (actually the Soviet Union), it therefore must have originated from that country.
However, both of these apparent facts are demonstrably untrue.
To take the second point first, it has now been proven beyond any doubt whatsoever that a number of other countries have either produced the substance, or know how to produce it. The Czech Government has admitted producing a small quantity of the closely related substance, A-230; Iran has produced Novichok, which it registered with the OPCW; The German Intelligence Agency, BND, was given the formula back in the 1990s, and they shared it with a number of other NATO countries, including the US and UK. The Edgewood Chemical and Biological Defense Command in Maryland, USA, recorded the formula back in 1998.
What is more, as the Moon of Alabama website points out, David Collum, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Cornell University has not only stated that his students could create the substance, but he actually got them to do an experiment to make it. According to the results, 15 out of 16 students did so successfully!
All of which means that the claim that the poison must have come from Russia is demonstrably untrue.
But if analysis of that second claim shows the British Government’s theory to be somewhat dodgy, scrutiny of the first shows it to be entirely false. Given the toxicity of A-234, being around 5-8 times more toxic than VX (some reports state it as being 10 times more toxic), had the Skripals come into contact with it on the door handle of Mr Skripal’s house, as is alleged, one of two things would have occurred:
a) They would either have died within a few minutes of coming into contact with it or
b) In the remote possibility that they had survived, they would have suffered for the rest of their short lives from irreparable damage to their central nervous system, with a number of chronic health issues, such as cirrhosis, toxic hepatitis, and epilepsy (see here for details of what I understand to be the only known survivor of poisoning by this substance, Andrei Zheleznyakov).
What they would not have done is spent the next four hours swanning around Salisbury, going for a drink and then for a meal in a restaurant. What they would not have done is to exhibit symptoms closer to having been poisoned by a hallucinogenic than a military grade nerve agent. And they most certainly would not have collapsed at exactly the same time as each other, four hours later, after showing no previous signs of illness in the restaurant.
Yet as it is, not only are the Skripals and D.S. Bailey still alive, but none have suffered irreparable damage to their nervous system. In fact, in her conversation with her cousin, Viktoria, on 5th April, Yulia Skripal specifically made mention that “everyone’s health is fine, there are no irreparable things“.
Given that this is so, it is entirely rational to come to the following conclusion:
The claim that Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal and D.S. Bailey were poisoned by A-234, which is one of the most deadly nerve agents known to man, and which either kills or leaves its victims with irreparable damage, is demonstrably untrue.
Having dealt with the official story, I want in Part 2 to deal with what I believe to be some of the most interesting clues in this case, each of which is being ignored or swept under the carpet.
Some of my previous pieces on the Skripal Case:
♦ 30 Questions That Journalists Should be Asking About the Skripal Case
♦ 20 More Questions That Journalists Should be Asking About the Skripal Case
♦ The Skripal Case: 20 New Questions That Journalists Might Like to Start Asking
♦ The Lady and the Curiously Absent Suspect — Yet Another 20 Questions on the Skripal Case
♦ The Slowly Building Anger in the UK at the Government’s Handling of the Skripal Case
♦ The Three Most Important Aspects of the Skripal Case so Far … and Where They Might be Pointing
♦ A Bucketful of Novichok
♦ What Would Sherlock Holmes Have Made of the Government’s Explanation of the Case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal?
Sinister Choreography of the MH17 Probe to Smear Russia
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 31.05.2018
The Dutch-led probe into the 2014 Malaysian airliner disaster has the hallmarks of a psychological operation to frame-up Russia and to justify further sanctions and aggression from the NATO powers.
The so-called Joint Investigation Team (JIT) released an update last Thursday on its ongoing probe into the MH17 air disaster over Eastern Ukraine, in which all 298 people onboard were killed. The JIT’s latest release moves the accusation of culpability closer to Russia, with the team claiming that an anti-aircraft Buk missile, which allegedly shot down the plane, was brought into Ukraine by Russia’s 53rd Brigade based in Kursk, southwest Russia.
Then on Friday, the day after the high-profile JIT presentation, a news report compiled by US-based McClatchy News and UK-based self-styled online investigative website Bellingcat was published claiming to have identified a senior Russian military intelligence (GRU) officer as being involved in the transport of the missile system.
The Russian GRU officer is named as Oleg Vladimirovich Ivannikov. The report includes a photograph of the named man, who is said to have at least one residential address in Moscow and who used the call sign “Orion”. Tellingly, the McClatchy report claims that news of identifying the Russian military officer was not known by the JIT when it made its presentation the day before. But McClatchy reported that the Dutch-led investigators now want to arraign “Orion”.
Over the weekend, the Dutch, Australian and British governments upped the ante by formally accusing Russia, and demanding that Moscow pay financial compensation to families of the crash victims. Most of those onboard the doomed MH17 were Dutch, Malaysian and Australian nationals.
What we are seeing here is a choreographed sequence trying to give the public impression that developments in the probe are taking a natural course based on “evidence” imputing blame to Russia. The same technique of media psychological operation can be seen in the Skripal poisoning affair in which Moscow is blamed for trying to assassinate a former spy in England. Allegations, purported evidence, and then sanctions (expulsion of Russian diplomats) all follow a choreographed sequence.
On the MH17 incident, Russia has vehemently denied any involvement in the passenger plane’s downing. Moscow says its own investigation into the incident points to the Kiev regime’s armed forces as being responsible, possibly using their stock of Soviet-era Buk anti-aircraft missiles. Significantly, Russia’s investigative results have been spurned by the JIT, while Moscow’s offers of contributing to the probe have been rebuffed. As in the Skripal affair, where the British authorities have also refused Russia’s offers of joint investigation, or Russia’s ability to independently verify the supposedly incriminating data.
In a dramatic twist, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that the missile casing displayed by the Dutch investigators bore features dating the weapon to 1986 when Ukraine was a Soviet Republic. The Russian military said that all such Buk models were replaced by its forces in 2011. Therefore, the alleged offensive weapon presented by the JIT last week could not have come from Russian forces. Besides, Moscow denies that any of its brigades crossed into Ukrainian territory.
The JIT, which includes investigators from Holland, Belgium, Australia, Malaysia and – invidiously – Ukrainian secret services, openly acknowledged in its presentation last week that it is cooperating with the Britain-based Bellingcat website. The latter is cited for its analysis of videos purporting to show the transport of a Russian military Buk convoy through Eastern Ukraine at around the time of the airliner being shot down. Those videos have already been exposed as fabrications.
Now it seems rather strange that the JIT was reported by McClatchy as not knowing of Bellingcat’s next “scoop” published the following day in which it claims to identify a Russian military officer, named as Oleg Ivannikov or Orion, for being involved in coordinating the transport of the Buk convoy, which the JIT says came from the 53rd Brigade in Russia’s Kursk.
The JIT and Bellingcat have collaborated in a previous update to its MH17 probe, in 2016, when the dubious videos were presented as purportedly showing the Buk convoy traversing Eastern Ukraine back to Russia. Bellingcat was cited again in the JIT’s update last Thursday.
That raises the question of why the information claiming to identify the Russian military officer was not available to JIT, even though the latter has worked closely with Bellingcat before? It was the next day when the McClatchy-Bellingcat news report came out, seemingly separate to the JIT presentation.
The sequence suggests a concerted effort to “build” a public perception that “clues” into the cause of the air crash and the incrimination of Russia are being assembled in an independent manner. When, in reality, the sequence is actually a deliberately orchestrated media campaign, to more effectively smear Russia.
Bellingcat’s media activities indicate that it is not the supposed “independent online investigative website” it claims to be. During the Syrian war, it has helped to peddle claims that videos sourced from the White Helmets are “authentic” when in fact there is strong evidence that the White Helmets have been fabricating videos of atrocities on behalf of NATO-sponsored terrorists in order to smear the Syrian government and its Russian ally.
For the Dutch-led JIT to associate with Bellingcat as a source of “evidence” is a matter of grave concern as to the probe’s professional credibility.
Moreover, what is also fatally damaging to the MH17 probe is that the Ukrainian secret services (SBU) under the control of the Western-backed Kiev regime, which came to power in the NATO-backed February 2014 coup d’état, is the source for much of the so-called evidence implicating Russia or the pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine for shooting down the MH17 airliner.
The dubious videos cited by the JIT and Bellingcat were sourced from the SBU. Those videos were purportedly posted on social media at the time of the plane crash by anonymous members of the public. The Russian government has dismissed those videos as fake.
The latest claims by McClatchy and Bellingcat of identifying a Russian military officer are based on allegations that mobile phone intercepts are attributable to the man named as Orion. Bellingcat appears to have expended a lot of effort trawling through digital phone books to identify the individual. The report also relies on embellishment of Orion’s alleged secret military career in Ukraine and South Ossetia by way of lending a sense of credibility and sinister innuendo.
However, the bottom line is that McClatchy and Bellingcat both admit that they are relying on the Ukrainian secret services for their phone intercepts, as they had previously for the videos of the alleged Russian Buk convoy.
The SBU and its Kiev masters have an obvious axe to grind against Moscow. Their partisan position, not to say potential liability for the air crash, thus makes the JIT and subsequent Western media reporting highly suspect.
Such close involvement of a Western media outlet (McClatchy ) with a fake news engine (Bellingcat ) and Ukrainian state intelligence is indicative of coordinated public psychological operation to smear Russia.
The prompt responses from Western governments calling for criminal proceedings against Moscow are further indication that the whole effort is an orchestrated campaign to frame-up Russia.
MH-17 Probe Follows Frame-Up Process of Skripal Poisoning
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 28.05.2018
The latest report by a Dutch-led investigation into the downing of a Malaysian airliner in 2014 casting blame on Russia for the disaster follows the same reprehensible flouting of due process as the Skripal poison affair.
No credible evidence is ever presented. The charges leveled against Russia largely rely on assertion and innuendo. And despite the grave implications for the accused, Russia is not permitted to access the investigation file independently to form an adequate defense against the claims.
This is far from the standard of due legal process. Ironically, by Western governments that claim to be paragons of law and jurisprudence. It is more akin to an inquisition where guilt is presumed from the outset, and where the prosecution is tilted heavily in favor of the accusers.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has released updated conclusions to its nearly-four-long probe into the airline disaster. On July 17, 2014, Malaysian MH-17 crashed while transiting airspace over eastern Ukraine on its way to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. All 298 people onboard were killed. Most of the victims were Dutch, Malaysian and Australian nationals.
A plausible explanation for the downing is that the aircraft was hit by a surface-to-air missile. The big question is who fired the missile since the Ukrainian region was the scene of intense fighting between Western-backed Kiev regime forces and pro-Russian rebels.
Western news media and governments immediately sought to blame Russian-backed rebels for the carnage. By dubious extension, President Vladimir Putin was vilified in some media coverage as being personally responsible for the deaths.
Russia has vehemently denied having any involvement in the incident. Indeed, Moscow has said it believes Kiev’s armed forces may have fired the missile.
The rebels in the Donbas region again this week reiterated that they were not responsible since they did not possess any such high-altitude anti-aircraft weapon systems.
The JIT probe previously reported that the weapon was a Soviet-made Buk missile. This week, the investigators dramatically upped the ante by charging that the missile came from a Russian anti-aircraft brigade based in Kursk, southwest Russia. The Dutch-led team claim that the 53rd Brigade transported the Buk system over the border into Ukraine. They claim that the convoy returned to Russia shortly after the downing of the airliner. The Dutch team leave the possibility open that the weapon may have been fired by another party, but the implication is Russian culpability.
Like the Skripal affair involving the alleged poisoning of a former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in England on March 4, the MH-17 case has been prejudiced from the outset by wild allegations of Russia’s guilt.
Within days of the purported poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury, the British government accused Russia of carrying out an assassination plot. There has never been any verifiable evidence presented by the British authorities to substantiate their sensational claims. The trick seems to be to railroad through a guilty verdict before any due process is allowed to take place.
Likewise in the case of the MH-17 disaster. Russia or Russia-backed militants have been labelled as guilty from the beginning. All proceedings thereafter seem to be solely for the purpose of “proving” the foregone conclusion.
A further similarity in this inquisitorial process is that Russian investigators have been excluded from multilateral fact-finding. The Dutch-led JIT is heavily reliant on NATO secret intelligence. More disturbing is that the Kiev regime, which should be treated as one of the suspect parties, has been allowed to contribute to the report findings. That is an incredible bias given the enormous incentive for Kiev and its NATO supporters to inculpate Russia or the pro-Russian rebels.
Responding to the report this week, President Putin quite correctly stated that Russia cannot acknowledge the charges because it has constantly been denied fair access to the investigation files. The Russian president said, however, that Russia was willing to participate in an open and transparent probe.
Again, this is analogous to the Skripal affair. Moscow has repeatedly offered to carry out a joint investigation and contribute to an elucidation of what really happened to the former spy and his adult daughter. But the British authorities have continually refused to include Russian investigators.
As for the lack of hard evidence, the British have based their tendentious allegations against Russia largely on the alleged detection of a Soviet-era chemical weapon. In the MH-17 case, the Dutch-led investigators are implicating Russia based on the alleged claim that the missile was a Soviet-made Buk system. That’s very elastic extrapolation.
The Kiev regime forces are in possession of Buk missiles dating back to when Ukraine was a Soviet Republic before 1991. It is entirely plausible that its forces could have fired the weapon that doomed the airliner.
Indeed, Russian military said this week that video images presented by the Dutch police of the alleged Buk missile’s casing indicate that the model is dated to the pre-1991 period. If that is the case, then one wonders why a top-notch, modern Russian defense brigade would be toting relatively old missiles if it were involved, as the JIT report claims.
Russia’s defense ministry said: “One of the arguments the investigators used to back up their charges the Russian military might have been involved in the tragedy was a fragment of the Buk missile’s engine demonstrated at a news conference. The serial number unambiguously indicates that the engine was manufactured in the Soviet Union back in 1986.”
As well as the unprecedented exclusion of Russia’s participation into what was an international disaster on its border, the JIT also omitted potentially crucial data such as radar and air-traffic communications, according to Moscow. The JIT also did not investigate why the Kiev authorities who had operating control over the aviation routes allowed the ill-fated airline to traverse what was at the time a hot war zone.
The Washington Post reported: “The investigators Thursday offered only open-source video and photographic evidence to support their conclusion that the missile came from a Russian military anti-aircraft system. Portions of the evidence already had been reported by the Bellingcat research group. But the international investigative team said that its findings stood independently and that it possessed additional information to buttress its conclusions that it would announce only in eventual courtroom proceedings.”
That is a startling admission. “Open-source videos” of an alleged Buk convoy hardly constitute credible evidence to support the severe claims being made against Russia.
The mention too of using Bellingcat as a source is also deeply troubling. This self-styled “expert group” of amateur sleuths based in England, run by Eliot Higgins, has been notoriously collaborating with Western military intelligence to frame-up Syrian state forces and Russia over alleged atrocities. It specializes in peddling fake videos as used by the terrorist affiliate, the White Helmets. Anything that Bellingcat puts its name to should be treated with derision, not deference as the Dutch prosecutors have done.
Note too how the JIT claims to have “additional information” that it says it will present in a future courtroom. That’s not acceptable. It is making very grave allegations and innuendo against Russia in the present based on flimsy videos.
Furthermore, the Dutch and Australian governments are leaping ahead with threats of bringing criminal charges against the Russian government and demanding Moscow pay financial compensation to the crash victims’ families.
Such reckless adversarial positions are setting up a new geopolitical conflict with Russia based on prejudice and hearsay. Following the 2014 air crash, the US and Europe imposed a raft of economic sanctions on Russia, without any substantiation. The precedent has been set for even more sanctions following this week’s JIT report.
Just like the Skripal affair which resulted in 150 Russian diplomats being expelled by dozens of countries merely on the back of British assertions, Western governments and media are again finding Moscow guilty over the MH-17 tragedy, without any evidence or due process.
The same can be said with regard to a whole host of anti-Russia media campaigns: alleged electoral interference in Western states; alleged Olympic sports doping, alleged cyberattacks; alleged aggression against Europe; alleged violations in Syria; and so on and so on.
There is no due process here. The only process taking place is one of extreme, unrelenting provocation towards Russia.
Draft Version of Scotland Yard’s Statement on Behalf of Sergei Skripal
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | May 25, 2018
Warning: It is “highly likely” that this statement contains traces of satire.
“I was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital on the 18th May, more than two months after being poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia.
Like my daughter Yulia, I find myself in a new and unique set of circumstances than the ones I faced before the 4th March, when I was poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia.
I am now spending the time of my convalescence seeking to come to terms with my prospects, and looking forward to a future without trepidation, despite having being poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia.
I would like to take this opportunity to correct a number of erroneous stories that have been circulating on the worldwide web, especially on a number of sites devoted to the propagation of conspiracy theories.
The first is in respect to my alleged connections with my former MI6 handler, who also happens to live in Salisbury, and with whom I was in the habit of frequenting one of the City’s establishments for the consumption of certain comestibles and beverages. I would like to assure those attempting to make these links that there is no credibility in them whatsoever, and that they should desist from making them. We were merely old friends who happened to share a passion for gardening, backgammon, and Châteauneuf-Du-Pape 2014 Réserve Des Oliviers. Any connection between this relationship and my poisoning — by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia — is entirely without foundation.
I would also like to address those who claim that I am being held against my will and denied my rights. I want to clarify that this supposition is very wide of the mark and bears no relation to the actualité. On the contrary, I have the freedom to go wherever I wish, naturally within the bounds of the beautiful location in which I currently reside, and I would also want to reassure everyone that I have full access to friends, family, and information. I am free to call my mother at anytime, and I may well do this, when I judge that it will not be prejudicial to my continued recovery. All such talk of disappearance or abduction is arrant nonsense.
I have been assigned specially trained officers who have helped to take care of all my needs and who have explained the details of the painstaking investigative processes that are being undertaken to establish how I and my daughter were poisoned by a military grade nerve agent — of a type developed by Russia — on the door handle of my abode. They have also explained that the substance must have been carefully designed to take effect on the two of us at precisely the same time, some four hours after its administration, and after we had visited a public house and a restaurant in the City. They have also been very helpful in explaining how it was nothing short of a miracle that Yulia and I recovered from what I understand is ordinarily the most deadly of substances, with no irreparable damage.
I wish to make clear that I have been given the names and email addresses of staff at the Russian Embassy in London, and naturally I am perfectly free to contact them at any time, should I wish to avail myself of their services. However, at this particular juncture, whilst I am simply overwhelmed by their abundant kindness in attempting to contact me, I would like them know that I do not wish to speak to them or see them, and I would ask them to kindly desist from all their efforts to pressure the British Government into granting access to me.
Although I feel perfectly safe and secure at my new location, which understandably cannot be disclosed, I do not yet feel able to face the media to give a full interview, although it is the deepest desire of my heart to one day do so. Until such time, I want to make it abundantly clear that nobody speaks for me or on my behalf, except of course the fully trained and highly professional officers of Scotland Yard, whom I have authorised to speak and release statements on my behalf.
Any suggestion that this statement was written by them without my knowledge, or that it was written by me whilst under duress, is — to coin a popular English idiom — manufactured from whole cloth. I would ask that, out of respect for my privacy, people desist from asking any further questions in this respect.
I want to end by thanking the British Prime Minister, Mrs May, and her colleague, Mr Johnson, who I understand acted swiftly, decisively and — I might add — courageously in dealing with the political ramifications of the poisoning, by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia. Their actions in attributing culpability so swiftly are highly commendable and a demonstration of their undoubted bravery, their commitment to upholding the rule of law, and of course their remarkable fitness to lead in their respective ministerial positions.
I hope very much to be able to return to Russia one day, but in the short term, I look forward to being reunited with my pet cat and two guinea pigs, which I understand are being well looked after at an undisclosed location.”
Russia ‘absolutely’ rejects Dutch & Aussie accusations it’s responsible for MH17 downing
RT | May 25, 2018
Moscow has rejected any involvement in the crash of flight MH17 in Ukraine after the Netherlands and Australia declared Russia “responsible” for the deployment of a BUK missile system that downed the jet in 2014.
Moscow neither accepts nor trusts the results of an international investigation into the MH17 crash as it was not allowed to take part in it, according to the Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“Of course, without being able to be a full participant, Russia does not know to what extent the results of this work can be trusted,” he said.
Peskov echoed the position of the Russian president Vladimir Putin who earlier said that, although Ukraine was included in the probe, Russia was barred from participating in establishing the truth.
Asked if he can confirm that Russia vehemently denies any involvement in the MH17 downing, Peskov replied “absolutely.”
Earlier on Friday, Amsterdam and Canberra said Russia is “responsible for its part in the downing of flight MH17” following a Thursday press conference of the Dutch-led International Investigation Team (JIT). The latter concluded that a BUK missile system from a Russian 53rd brigade was transported to eastern Ukraine and used to down the passenger plane with more than 300 people onboard. The system was then said to have returned to Russia.
“The [Dutch] government is now taking the next step by formally holding Russia accountable,” Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Stef Blok said in a statement. However, the Russian military earlier said that not a single weapons system crossed the border.
MH17 tragedy may be used to achieve political goals – Lavrov
The country’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Moscow would not reject closer cooperation on the MH17 probe, but only if the data it provides is included as well. He also compared the case with the Skripal scandal, in which London made groundless allegations and pinned the blame on Moscow, but failed to provide any proof.
“If our partners have decided to speculate on this case, when it comes to the most serious human tragedy, the death of hundreds of people, to achieve their political goals, I leave it on their conscience,” Lavrov said.
Despite the JIT claiming that it conducted a separate probe, it did not move any further than the British investigative group Bellingcat – some reports of which came under fire and were refuted by Russian activists. Among other flaws in the earlier Bellingcat claims was the assertion that the Ukrainian Army had no Buk systems in the conflict area. However, in a countering statement, Russian activists presented reports from the Ukrainian media itself showing Buk missiles in the area prior to the downing of the plane.
Bellingcat’s online investigations have previously raised questions regarding their accuracy. After the group’s founder, Eliot Higgins, published one of his reports on Syria, he was asked to discuss his findings with prominent MIT physicist Theodore Postol. However, the blogger declined the debate and insulted the scientist, triggering an avalanche of criticism on Twitter.
The allegation that the missile belonged to the Russian military had earlier been debunked by the Buk manufacturer, Almaz-Antey. Its real-time experiment showed that the projectile which hit MH17 (Boeing 777) was from an earlier generation and is no longer in service with the Russian military. It was found that the plane was likely shot down using an old 9M38 missile, not the newer type 9M38M1 with distinct butterfly-shaped metal fragments, which were allegedly recovered by the Dutch Safety Board.
Moreover, Almaz-Antey’s findings, which analyzed the angle from which the projectiles entered the cockpit of the ill-fated flight, showed that the most probable location of the launch site could be only on Kiev-controlled territory. Untampered Russian radar data provided by Moscow led to similar conclusions.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Ukrainian forces kept around 20 Buk systems, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The military also stressed that Moscow has not supplied any new missiles to Ukraine since then.
Read more:
Time for UK to Apologize to Moscow for Accusations Over Skripal Case – Embassy
Sputnik – 25.05.2018
The Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom said on Friday it was time for the UK side to apologize to Russia for accusations over the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, as no evidence was provided by London to substantiate its claims of Moscow’s involvement during the three months which passed since the incident.
“Time has come for British authorities to apologize to Russia for the hollow accusations accompanied by an unprecedented anti-Russian campaign, to give answers to all the questions and requests officially sent to the British side on this matter, to engage with Russian law enforcement agencies that have opened the criminal case regarding the attempted murder of Yulia Skripal, and to stop isolating the two Russian citizens,” the embassy’s press release read.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged to stop speculations on the so-called Skripal case and conduct a joint objective investigation instead.
“We need to either carry out a joint objective and thorough investigation, or simply stop talking on this topic, because it does not lead to anything but a deterioration of relations,” he said.
Putin also questioned the alleged fact of poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter by a military-grade nerve agent.
“I’m not a specialist in chemical warfare agents, but as far as I can imagine, if a warfare agent is used, the victims of this attack die on the spot, almost immediately. But nothing happened in this case. Skripal himself and his daughter are alive, and have been discharged from the hospital. His daughter looks quite alright, everyone is alive and well,” the president stressed.
On May 1, UK National Security Adviser Mark Sedwill told the UK lower house defense committee that no suspects had been identified in the March’s attack on the former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury.
Analysis by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) of the Salisbury incident confirmed the UK findings related to the nature of the chemical used in the poisoning, but did not include any information that would help the UK government substantiate claims about Russian involvement in the incident.
The United Kingdom and its allies have blamed Russia for an alleged role in the poisoning despite presenting no proof. Over a hundred Russian diplomats have since been expelled from these countries in solidarity with London and to put pressure on Moscow, which denies any involvement.
Missile that downed MH17 came from Russian military, unit of origin pinpointed – intl investigators
RT | May 24, 2018
A Dutch-led probe says the missile that hit flight MH17 over Ukraine came from a unit in western Russia. Claims about its Russian origin were made by activist group Bellingcat earlier, but it was seriously questioned back then.
The international team investigating the 2014 tragedy, in which Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine, reiterated the claim that it was a Buk missile, but now claims it also pinpointed the exact unit responsible.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) “has come to the conclusion that the BUK-TELAR that shot down MH17 came from 53rd Anti-aircraft Missile Brigade based in Kursk in Russia,” the head of the crime squad of the Dutch National Police, Wilbert Paulissen, told reporters on Thursday.
The findings also claim that the missile carrier came from Russia and was returned to the country. However, the investigators have apparently failed to move any further than British online investigative activist group Bellingcat, which presented their report nearly one year ago and made the same allegations.
“We realize that the investigation collective Bellingcat has already concluded the same and published it,” Paulissen said, noting that his team carried out a separate, “independent” probe.
The conclusions were announced even though the probe is still unfinished and currently in its “last phase,” and there is still much to be done, according to JIT members. Two questions still remain unanswered – who was responsible for shooting down the plane, and why did it happen? Moreover, further evidence to back up the “revelations” is currently not available to the public.
In 2016, the Dutch-led group said it suspected around 100 people could be linked to the alleged transportation of the Buk missile system to eastern Ukraine and the missile launch. Nearly two years of investigation made their role clearer, according to Thursday’s update, but the number of people involved was narrowed down to dozens, Dutch Chief Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said.
While the latest JIT statement hardly presents anything new, earlier Bellingcat reports were refuted by ‘Anti-Bellingcat’ activists. Russian bloggers, journalists, aviation experts, and volunteers united in a group to highlight significant flaws and inaccuracies in the Bellingcat version of the tragedy.
For example, there is the repeated claim that a Buk missile system was transported through the Russian-Ukrainian border to the place the missile was allegedly fired and then returned. The Bellingcat report used pictures and data from open sources, showing the Buk system on both sides of the border and claiming it was the same. However, the one spotted in Russia was of different modification, the activists noted, pointing out that it contains a “step” on the left side of the system.
The British group’s claims that there were no Ukrainian Buk missile systems in the conflict-zone were also debunked by their Russian peers. They provided various screen shots of Ukrainian media reports picturing the systems belonging to the Ukrainian Army in the same area.
Last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Russia provided uncut radar-location data “that cannot be faked or changed” and “clearly” shows the missile did not come from the direction the investigators claimed. However, all data on the tragedy provided by Moscow was only selectively accepted by the multinational team of investigators, Lavrov said at a joint news conference with his Dutch counterpart, Stef Blok in Moscow.
Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray unconvinced by Yulia Skripal interview: ‘Duress cannot be ruled out’
By Craig Murray | May 24, 2018
I was happy to see Yulia alive and looking reasonably well yesterday, if understandably stressed. Notably, and in sharp contrast to Litvinenko, she leveled no accusations at Russia or anybody else for her poisoning. In Russian she spoke quite naturally. Of the Russian Embassy she said very simply “I am not ready, I do not want their help”. Strangely this is again translated in the Reuters subtitles by the strangulated officialese of “I do not wish to avail myself of their services”, as originally stated in the unnatural Metropolitan Police statement issued on her behalf weeks ago.
“I do not wish to avail myself of their services” is simply not a translation of what she says in Russian and totally misses the “I am not ready” opening phrase of that sentence. My conclusion is that Yulia’s statement was written by a British official and then translated to Russian for her to speak, rather than the other way round. Also that rather than translate what she said in Russian themselves for the subtitles, Reuters have subtitled using a British government script they have been given.
It would of course have been much more convincing had Sergei also been present. Duress cannot be ruled out when he is held by the British authorities. I remain extremely suspicious that, at the very first chance she got in hospital, Yulia managed to get hold of a telephone (we don’t know how, it was not her own and she has not had access to one since) and phone her cousin Viktoria, yet since then the Skripals have made no attempt to contact their family in Russia. That includes no contact to Sergei’s aged mum, Yulia’s grandmother, who Viktoria cares for. Sergei normally calles his mother – who is 89 – regularly. This lack of contact is a worrying sign that the Skripals may be prevented from free communication to the outside world. Yulia’s controlled and scripted performance makes that more rather than less likely.
It is to me particularly concerning that Yulia does not seem to have social media access. The security services have the ability to give her internet risk free through impenetrable VPN. But they appear not to have done that.
We know a little more about the Salisbury attack now:
Nobody – not Porton Down, not the OPCW – has been able to state that the nerve agent found was of Russian manufacture, a fact which the MSM continues to disgracefully fudge with “developed in Russia” phrasing. As is now well known and was reported by Iran in scientific literature, Iran synthesised five novichoks recently. More importantly, the German spying agency BND obtained novichok in the 1990s and it was studied and synthesised in several NATO countries, almost certainly including the UK and USA.
In 1998, chemical formulae for novichok were introduced into the United States NIST National Institute of Standards and Technologies Mass Spectrometry Library database by U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical and Biological Defense Command, but the entry was later deleted. In 2009 Hillary Clinton instructed US diplomats to feign ignorance of novichoks, as revealed by the last paragraph of this Wikileaks released diplomatic cable.
Most telling was the Sky News interview with the head of Porton Down. Interviewer Paul Kelso repeatedly pressed Aitkenhead directly on whether the novichok could have come from Porton Down. Aitkenhead replies “There is no way, anything like that could… leave these four walls. We deal with a number of toxic substances in the work that we do, we’ve got the highest levels of security and controls”. Asked again twice, he each time says the security is so tight “the substance” could not have come from Porton Down. What Aitkenhead does NOT say is “of course it could not have come from here, we have never made it”. Indeed Aitkenhead’s repeated assertion that the security would never have let it out, is tantamount to an admission Porton Down does produce novichok.
If somebody asked you whether the lion that savaged somebody came from your garden, would you reply “Don’t be stupid, I don’t have a lion in my garden” or would you say, repeatedly, “Of course not, I have a very strong lion cage?”. Here you can see Mr Aitkenhead explain repeatedly he has a big lion cage, from 2’25” in.
So the question of where the nerve agent was made remains unresolved. The MSM has continually attempted to lie about this and affirm that all novichok is Russian made. The worst of corporate and state journalism in the UK was exposed when they took the OPCW’s report that it confirmed the findings of Porton Down and presented that as confirming the Johnson/May assertion that it was Russia, whereas the findings of Porton Down were actually – as the Aitkenhead interview stated categorically – that they could not say where it was made.
The other relatively new development is the knowledge that Skripal had not retired but was active for MI6 on gigs briefing overseas intelligence agencies about Russia. This did not increase his threat to Russia, as he told everything he knows a decade ago. But it could provide an element of annoyance that would indeed increase Russian official desire to punish him further.
But the fact he was still very much active has a far greater significance. The government slapped a D(SMA) notice on the identity of Pablo Miller, Skripal’s former MI6 handler who lives close by in Salisbury and who worked for Christopher Steele’s Orbis Intelligence at the time that Orbis produced the extremely unreliable dossier on Trump/Russia. The fact that Skripal had not retired but was still briefing on Russia, to me raises to a near certainty the likelihood that Skripal worked with Miller on the Trump dossier.
I have to say that, as a former Ambassador in the former Soviet Union trained in intelligence analysis and familiar with MI6 intelligence out of Moscow, I agree with every word of this professional dissection of the Orbis Trump dossier by Paul Roderick Gregory, irrespective of Gregory’s politics. In particular this paragraph, which Gregory wrote more than a year before the Salisbury attack, certainly applies to much of the dossier.
I have picked out just a few excerpts from the Orbis report. It was written, in my opinion, not by an ex British intelligence officer but by a Russian trained in the KGB tradition. It is full of names, dates, meetings, quarrels, and events that are hearsay (one an overheard conversation). It is a collection of “this important person” said this to “another important person.” There is no record; no informant is identified by name or by more than a generic title. The report appears to fail the veracity test in the one instance of a purported meeting in which names, dates, and location are provided. Some of the stories are so bizarre (the Rosneft bribe) that they fail the laugh test. Yet, there appears to be a desire on the part of some media and Trump opponents on both sides of the aisle to picture the Orbis report as genuine but unverifiable.
The Russian ex-intelligence officer who we know was in extremely close contact with Orbis at the time the report was written, was Sergei Skripal.
The Orbis report is mince. Skripal knew it was mince and how it was written. Skripal has a history of selling secrets to the highest bidder. The Trump camp has a lot of money. My opinion is that as the Mueller investigation stutters towards ignominious failure, Skripal became a loose end that Orbis/MI6/CIA/Clinton (take your pick) wanted tied off. That seems to me at least as likely as a Russian state assassination. To say Russia is the only possible suspect is nonsense.
The Incompetence Factor
The contradiction between the claim that the nerve agent was so pure it could only be manufactured by a state agent, and yet that it failed because it was administered in an amateur and incompetent fashion, does not bother the mainstream media. Boris Johnson claimed that the UK had evidence that Russia had a ten year programme of stockpiling secret novichok and he had a copy of a Russian assassination manual specifying administration by doorknob. Yet we are asked to believe that the Russians failed to notice that administration by doorknob does not actually work, especially in the rain. How two people both touched the doorknob in closing the door is also unexplained, as is how one policeman became poisoned by the doorknob but numerous others did not.
The explanations by establishment stooges of how this “ten times more powerful than VX” nerve agent only works very slowly, but then very quickly, if it touches the skin, and still does not actually kill you, have struck me as simply desperate. They make May’s ringing claims of a weapon of mass destruction being used on British soil appear somewhat unjustified. Weapon of Upset Tummy does not sound quite so exciting.
To paint a doorknob with something that, if it touches you, can kill you requires great care and much protective gear. That no strangely dressed individual has been identified by the investigation – which seems to be getting nowhere in identifying the culprit – is the key fact here. None of us know who did this. The finger-pointing at Russia by corporate and state interests seeking to stoke the Cold War is disgusting.
Ex-Spy Skripal’s Mother Asks UK on Russian TV to Let Her Talk to Son
Sputnik – 22.05.2018
A frail elderly lady who presented herself as the mother of a former Russian intelligence officer, who was allegedly poisoned in England in March, made a public appeal requesting to be allowed to talk to her son.
A 90-year-old woman, who identified herself as the mother of Sergei Skripal, made an appearance on Russian state television, pleading that the British authorities let her speak with her son via phone – something that she effectively still hasn’t been allowed to do.
“I haven’t seen my son for 14 years. I want to meet him, to hug my son tightly. I’m ninety years old, I pose no threat to anyone. Please, let me make at least one phone call to my son,” she said.
The woman added that she simply couldn’t comprehend why her son wasn’t allowed to contact her.
“Why won’t they let him call me? Why? For what reason? When he was at home, we talked with each other [by phone] every week, but now we can’t for some reason. Please, grant him permission so that he and I could talk.”
She also asked the British authorities to allow Viktoria Skripal, Sergei’s niece, to visit him.
“I cry every day as I wait for a message from my son,” the elderly lady said, sobbing.
Despite the claim, there have been no official comments from the UK authorities or media reports confirming that Skripal’s mother previously asked London to talk with her son on the phone.
On May 18 the British National Health Service announced that Sergei Skripal has been discharged from Salisbury District Hospital.
The exact whereabouts and the fate of Sergei and Yulia, who were released from hospital on April 11, are currently unknown.
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer currently living in Britain, and his daughter Yulia were allegedly poisoned in Salisbury on March 4.
A week later, London blamed Moscow for the attack, which the British authorities claimed was carried out using a military-grade nerve agent called A-234 Novichok.
Moscow denied the allegations and proposed a joint investigation, which the UK refused.
OPCW says chlorine ‘likely’ used in Syria based on open-source info & samples provided by jihadists
RT | May 17, 2018
The OPCW report claiming that chlorine was “likely used” in Saraqeb, Syria in February is “seriously misleading” because its narrative is based on evidence provided by jihadists, a former UK ambassador told RT.
A fact-finding mission (FFM) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Wednesday published a report which “determined that chlorine, released from cylinders through mechanical impact, was likely used as a chemical weapon on 4 February 2018 in the Al Talil neighborhood of Saraqib” in the Idlib province of Syria. Eleven people were treated after the attack for mild and moderate symptoms of toxic chemical exposure, the OPCW said in a report on its findings.
The FFM based their conclusions on a number of factors, namely the presence of two empty cylinders, which allegedly earlier contained chlorine as well as patients who were admitted to medical facilities after the reported incident. The report also states that the FFM never made it to the site of the alleged attack and relied solely on ‘evidence’ provided by three NGOs, two of which are based overseas. Despite the compelling narrative of the OPCW, the former British ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, characterized the report as “seriously misleading” and “deeply disturbing.”
“The mission was supposed to be fact finding, but when you actually read the 34 pages of the report, you discover that there are no facts in it at all – not one fact which is supported by independent observers,” Ford told RT.
“You hear ridiculous claims such as, ‘we heard barrel bombs being dropped from helicopters.’ Well, I’m sorry that is a physical impossibility. And the report is full of idiotic statements like this that even a child could discard.”
In fact, the entire OPCW account is based on witness testimonies and material evidence provided by selected NGOs as well as medical records offered by the same questionable sources, including Belgium-based Same Justice/Chemical Violations Documentation Center of Syria (CVDCS), the notorious Syrian Civil Defence (SCD) – better known as White Helmets – and the US-based Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS).
Ford noted that the White Helmets are a “well-known jihadi auxiliary who have assisted in beheadings and who are notorious for making propaganda,” and that SAMS shares “a similar reputation.”
Other relevant information for the international chemical watchdog was gathered from “open-source media” because “various constraints,” mainly related to security, prevented “immediate access to sites by the FFM.”
“Believe it or not the inspectors did not go to the… alleged scene of the crime. Why? Because it is in the hands of jihadists. That is why they did not go,” Ford said. “These people are totally affiliated with the jihadists, yet the inspectors accepted at face value their samples which could have come from absolutely anywhere.”
While the OPCW did not assign responsibility for the attack, the White Helmets and SAMS have previously pointed the finger at Damascus.
Nevertheless, the inconclusive OPCW findings in the Saraqeb incident will likely be used to further back the narrative of the US and its allies, who repeatedly used claims by the White Helmets, SAMS, and other questionable sources to unequivocally pin the blame on President Bashar Assad. Chemical ‘incidents’ were also used as a pretext to strike government facilities in Syria in April 2017, and again as recently as last month.
“There are signs in the report of partiality,” Ford told RT. “I’m sure that attempts will be made to exploit this very inadequate report.”
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From the Archives
The Geopolitics behind the War in Yemen (I)
By Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 30.03.2015
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.
The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saudi. … continue
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