An intelligence service given free rein to commit ‘serious crimes’ in its own country is an intelligence service that is the enemy of its people.
The quite astounding revelation that Britain’s domestic intelligence service, MI5, has enjoyed this very freedom for decades has only just been made public at a special tribunal in London, set up to investigate the country’s intelligence services at the behest of a coalition of human rights groups, alleging a pattern of illegality up to and including collusion in murder.
The hitherto MI5 covert policy sanctioning its agents to commit and/or solicit serious crimes, as and when adjudged provident, is known as the Third Direction. This codename has been crafted, it would appear, by someone with a penchant for all things James Bond within an agency whose average operative is more likely to be 5’6” and balding with a paunch and bad teeth than any kind of lantern-jawed 007.
The Pat Finucane Centre, one of the aforementioned human rights groups involved in bringing about this tribunal investigation (Investigatory Powers Tribunal, to give it its Sunday name) into the nefarious activities of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, issued a damning statement in response to the further revelation that former Prime Minister David Cameron introduced oversight guidelines with regard to the MI5 covert third direction policy back in 2012.
Cameron’s decision to do so, the group claims, was far from nobly taken:
“It can be no coincidence that Prime Minister David Cameron issued new guidelines, however flawed, on oversight of MI5 just two weeks before publication of the De Silva report into the murder of Pat Finucane. The PM was clearly alive to the alarming evidence which was about to emerge of the involvement of the Security Service in the murder. To date no-one within a state agency has been held accountable. The latest revelations make the case for an independent inquiry all the more compelling.”
Pat Finucane, a Belfast Catholic, plied his trade as a human rights lawyer at a time when the right to be fully human was denied the minority Catholic community of the small and enduring outpost of British colonialism in the north east corner of Ireland, otherwise known as Northern Ireland. He was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989, back when the decades-long conflict euphemistically referred to as the Troubles still raged, claiming victims both innocent and not on all sides.
Unlike the vast majority of those killed and murdered in the course of this brutal conflict, Finucane’s murder sparked a long and hard fought struggle for justice by surviving family members, friends and campaigners. They allege – rather convincingly, it should be said – that it was carried out with the active collusion of MI5.
Stepping back and casting a wider view over this terrain, the criminal activities of Britain’s intelligence services constitute more than enough material for a book of considerable heft. How fortunate then that just such a book has already been written.
In his ‘Dead Men Talking: Collusion, Cover Up and Murder in Northern Ireland’s Dirty War’, author Nicholas Davies “provides information on a number of the killings [during the Troubles], which were authorized at the highest level of MI5 and the British government.”
But over and above the crimes of MI5 in Ireland, what else have those doughty defenders of the realm been up to over the years? After all, what is the use of having a license to engage in serious criminal activity, including murder and, presumably, torture, if you’re not prepared to use (abuse) it? It begs the question of how many high profile deaths attributed to suicide, natural causes, and accident down through the years have been the fruits of MI5 at work?
And what about the possibility of MI5’s involvement in, dare we use the term, false flag operations?
As someone who abhors the premise of conspiracy theory on principle, the fact that more and more are turning to its warm embrace as an intellectual reflex against what is politely described as the ‘official narrative’ of events, well this is no surprise when we learn of the egregious machinations of Western intelligence agencies such as Britain’s MI5.
What we are bound to state, doing so without fear of contradiction, is this particular revelation opens up a veritable Pandora’s Box of grim possibilities when it comes to the potential crimes committed by Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, ensuring that a full and vigorous investigation and public inquiry is now both necessary and urgent.
If any such investigation is to be taken seriously, however, it must include in its remit the power to investigate all possible links between Britain’s intelligence community and organisations such as, let’s see, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group?
The deafening UK mainstream media and political class silence over the trail connecting 2017 Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi and MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, leaves a lingering stench of intrigue that will not out. The work of investigative journalist Mark Curtis on this sordid relationship is unsurpassed.
As Curtis writes, “The evidence suggests that the barbaric Manchester bombing, which killed 22 innocent people on May 22nd, is a case of blowback on British citizens arising at least partly from the overt and covert actions of British governments.”
In the same report he arrives at a conclusion both damning and chilling: “The evidence points to the LIFG being seen by the UK as a proxy militia to promote its foreign policy objectives. Whitehall also saw Qatar as a proxy to provide boots on the ground in Libya in 2011, even as it empowered hardline Islamist groups.”
Finally: “Both David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Theresa May – who was Home Secretary in 2011 when Libyan radicals were encouraged to fight Qadafi [Muammar Gaddafi] – clearly have serious questions to answer. We believe an independent public enquiry is urgently needed.”
In words that echo down to us from ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal taunts our complacency with a question most simple and pertinent: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Who will guard the guards themselves?
Edward R Murrow puts it rather more bluntly: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
Sooner or later, people in Britain are going to have to wake up to who the real enemy is.
Read more:
October 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, MI5, MI6, UK |
4 Comments
The head of the MI5, Andrew Parker, has reportedly invited Corbyn to a “facts of life” briefing on the real terrorist threats facing the country.
But Corbyn has postponed the meeting, which was scheduled for Tuesday, as he is expected to spend all day attending a meeting of Labour’s National Executive Committee as he battles to quell a storm over anti-Semitism that has engulfed his leadership.
“The subjects of the briefing would have included issues relating to the domestic security threat, counterterrorism, counter-espionage, Russia and returning foreign fighters,” The Sunday Times wrote, quoting intelligence sources.
This would have been the first time the Labour leader would have been briefed by the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service, the newspaper wrote.
Jeremy Corbyn had been told he could bring along his chief advisor Seumas Milne and Labour’s shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott to the briefing.
Another source told the newspaper that Britain’s security services have been “troubled” by some of Jeremy Corbyn’s statements on terrorism.
When speaking after last year’s bombing in Manchester, Corbyn suggested that it was London’s foreign policy, rather than jihadist ideology, that bears the blame for terrorist atrocities.
Corbyn and Milne have also questioned the veracity of the security services’ conclusion about Russia’s alleged involvement in the Skripals’ poisoning in March, with Milne saying that she found it “problematic” to trust the security services after the Blair government lied about the strength of the intelligence about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the US-led invasion of the Arab country in 2003.
September 2, 2018
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism | Jeremy Corbyn, MI5, UK |
6 Comments
UK Labour Party has called on the Conservative government to make clear whether the secret blacklists of civil servants, introduced by the cabinet of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, are still in place, Shadow Lord President of the Council Jon Trickett said on Wednesday.
“How many civil servants were denied career progression because of a paranoia that ran to the top of the Thatcher government? Former and current civil servants must be deeply unsettled. The Cabinet Office must provide immediate and full transparency on whether spying on civil servants, in any form, continues to this day,” Trickett said, as quoted by The Guardian newspaper.
Earlier this week, the UK National Archives released papers showing that Thatcher’s government, together with MI5, the nation’s domestic intelligence agency, prepared a list of 1,420 civil servants, primarily leftists, who were regarded as potentially subversive. Persons from the list faced problems with career promotion.
He pointed out that civil servants had a right to know whether they were being monitored for their political beliefs.
The Guardian sent a request to the Cabinet Office concerning the blacklists, and the latter responded by saying the issue was a “historical matter.”
July 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, MI5, UK |
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The British government’s involvement in torture and rendition is “beyond doubt” the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) said today. The parliamentary committee, which oversee the work of the intelligence machinery of the UK, revealed the true scale of the UK government’s involvement in torture and rendition since the war on terror was launched by US President George Bush in 2001.
It is one of the most damning indictments ever of UK intelligence. Torture and rendition, according to the ISC, were much more widespread than previously reported. The ISC rejected the intelligence agencies’ defence and said that the cases were not just “isolated incidents”.
A litany of cases of concern was highlighted in two reports by the USC. One report deals with the mistreatment and rendition of detainees between 2001 and 2010, while the other considers current issues.
It said that in 232 cases UK personnel continued to supply questions or intelligence to other services despite knowledge or suspicion of mistreatment. In 198 cases UK personnel received intelligence from liaison services and knew that the detainees had been mistreated or at least should have suspected mistreatment.
Committee chairman, Conservative MP Dominic Grieve said: “In our view the UK tolerated actions, and took others, that we regard as inexcusable.” In three individual cases the MI6 or MI5 even made or offered to make a financial contribution to others to conduct a rendition operation. In 28 cases, the agencies suggested, planned or agreed to rendition operations proposed by others. In a further 22 cases, MI6 or MI5 provided intelligence to enable a rendition operation to take place. In 23 cases they failed to take action to prevent rendition.
Rendering or rendition involves sending a person from one country to another for imprisonment and interrogation, by methods such as torture, which would be illegal in the country doing the rendering. Prisoners were taken to prisons known as black sites scattered around the globe in some of the most brutal regimes to interrogate and torture prisoners. US intelligence agencies used the process of “extraordinary rendition” to send terror suspects for interrogation by security officials in other countries, where they have no legal protection or rights under American law.
“That the US, and others, were mistreating detainees is beyond doubt, as is the fact that the agencies and defence intelligence were aware of this at an early point,” the report says. “The same is true of rendition: there was no attempt to identify the risks involved and formulate the UK’s response. The report said that there was no understanding in HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] of rendition and no clear policy – or even recognition of the need for one.”
Grieve, said that the committee had reluctantly decided to bring the inquiry to a premature end because it had been denied access to key intelligence individuals by the prime minister. “It is difficult to comprehend how those at the top of the office did not recognise the pattern of mistreatment by the US,” he continued. Grieve also said that had the inquiry continued, the committee would have called the then home secretary, David Blunkett, and the previous foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to explain what they understood to be the situation at the time and why a briefing was not requested.
The committee also said that they wanted to interview the MI6 officers involved but the government had “denied [us] access to those individuals.”
Craig Murray, a former British diplomat, who gave “key evidence” to the ISC said in a Facebook post that he is the only senior British civil servant to enter a written protest of the torture policy but was sacked as a result.
June 28, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, MI5, MI6, UK, United States |
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As you may have noticed from the title, I’m cutting to the chase on this one. Context is everything these days when attempting to understand major geopolitical events.
Sergei Skripal is a former Russian army colonel who worked for Soviet military intelligence during the Cold War. In the late 1990s he was recruited by MI6 as a double agent. In December 2004, Skripal was arrested and charged with “high treason in the form of espionage”, convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison. In July 2010, he was released as part of a spy exchange for ten Russian agents who had been arrested in the United States as part of the ‘Illegals Program’. Skripal was then settled in the UK by MI6 in the town of Salisbury. Yesterday he was found on a public bench with his 33 year old daughter, Yulia. Both were incoherent and/or incapacitated. When medical personnel arrived, some of them also allegedly became ill.
Within a few hours of the discovery of the pair, the British media and politicians had decided that they had been poisoned at the behest of Vladimir Putin himself, with some as yet “unknown substance”. British newspapers said it, so it must be true. British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, threatened fresh sanctions against Russia if it is proven to have poisoned a Russian double agent and branded the country “a malign and disruptive force”. No evidence was cited to back up any of these allegations, because everyone ‘knows’ that Putin is a ruthless dictator who just loves to bump off people that he doesn’t like. British newspapers and politicians said it, so it must be true.
For the unfortunate cretins who still refuse to swallow the anti-Russia narrative, the British government and media duly require you to remember the case of Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian intelligence agent who became a British intelligence asset. Litvinenko was, ‘everyone knows’ murdered in 2006 by polonium that was given to him by two Russian spies on the ‘direct orders of Putin’. The problem is that there was, and is today, no hard evidence for this claim. But who needs evidence when you have a propaganda bullhorn to addle the public brain. Mush-for-brains are highly averse to evidence anyway. It’s much better to quote the words of people like Alexander Goldfarb, long term anti-Putin activist, author of Litvinenko’s death bed testimony accusing Putin, and promoter of the activities of ‘Pussy Riot’. On the Skripal situation, Goldfarb, who was (coincidentally) a close friend of Skripal, said:
“Any reasonable person would think immediately that Russia had the opportunity, motive and a prior history of this kind of crime so it is reasonable to think it was involved in this attack. This is the Kremlin’s modus operandi. There are plenty of precedents. ‘What’s interesting now is that this happens just before Russia’s presidential election.”
The Skripal event, and the way it is being reported, cannot be understood except in the context of the vicious and persistent defamation and slander campaign that Western governments and media have waged against Russia over the past several years. To put it another way, the Skripal event is simply one more chapter in that defamation campaign. The reasons for the West’s anti-Russia hysteria have everything to do with the fact that, over the past 10-15 years, Russia has re-emerged as a powerful independent player on the world stage, capable of pushing back long-standing Anglo-American designs on global control. Exceptional nations with a serious megalomaniacal streak (and their lackeys) don’t like being pushed back, not even an inch. When they don’t get their way, and lack the cojones to engage in a fair fight, they resort to dirty tricks and smear campaigns, at which they are very adept.
But really, is there NO evidence? Well, the UK Independent informed its readers today that, while there is still no word on any toxicology reports, ‘some experts’ suggest that Skirpal and his daughter may have been poisoned by ‘nerve agents’ because a witness described Mr Skripal and his daughter vomiting, twitching and unable to move. The Indy hacks then informed us that among the most powerful nerve agents is VX, “a toxin developed at the British Ministry of Defence Porton Down facility, which was used to assassinate Kim Jong-nam – the brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in February 2017″.
Without a hint of irony, Salisbury MP John Glen told the BBC today: “Fortunately just down the road in my constituency at Porton Down defence, science and technology labs exist and they will have taken the substance and will be trying to evaluate what they can, no doubt.” Indeed, Porton Down is about 5 miles from the bench where Skripal and his daughter were found. Very fortunate indeed, and more than a little coincidental.
The name of the research facility at Porton Down has undergone many changes over the years, although the words “chemical” and “defence” have been consistently used, giving the impression that…well….that it is used only for research into “defence” against “chemical” weapons. In 1991, however, the UK “Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research” moved to the Porton Down facility and its name was changed to the “Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment”, reflecting the addition of biological warfare agent research to the list of “services” that Porton Down offered. In 2004, with PC culture in full bloom in Western nations, the name was sanitized somewhat to ‘Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’.
Some of the known highlights of the Porton Down facility include:
When the foot-and-mouth virus ravaged British cattle in 2002, it was later revealed that the outbreak was likely caused when a phial of the virus ‘went missing’ from the facility.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, 20,000 ‘volunteers’ were unwittingly involved in a chemical and biological weapons trials at Porton Down that left them with long-term ill health.
Ronald Maddison
20-year-old Ronald Maddison died 45 minutes after 200mg of the deadly nerve agent sarin was dripped onto a patch of uniform taped to his arm at Porton Down. He was told he was testing a flu vaccine.
Thousands of British orphans who were regarded as “feeble-minded” were allegedly used for trialing drugs for use in the Cold War
While no official source has confirmed it (for obvious reasons) it’s highly likely that Skirpal was settled by MI5 in Salisbury because his new job was five miles away at Porton Down. Perhaps the most dangerous part of working for Western intelligence agencies in the 21st century, particularly if you are a Russian double agent, is that your life is implicitly forfeit in service to the West’s new great game of ‘stop Russia at all costs’. Litvinenko and now (most likely) Skirpal and his daughter found that out a little too late.
March 7, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular | MI5, Sergei Skripal, UK |
10 Comments
A convicted terrorist suspect who aided the Brussels bombers has claimed that he was recruited and groomed by UK spies before being thrown “to the wolves” once he was no longer deemed useful.
Zakaria Boufassil, who was sentenced to three years in jail on Monday after being convicted of aiding terrorism, had handed £3,000 to a jihadist named Mohammed Abrini in the city of Birmingham in July of 2015, just months before Abrini was involved in the 2016 Brussels bombing.
Moroccan-born Abrini became known as ‘the man in the hat’ after being spotted on CCTV in the Belgian capital ahead of the suicide bombings that killed 32 civilians. Abrini was also connected with the 2015 Paris attacks.
Boufassil claims that he was groomed by MI5 – Britain’s internal security agency – starting six weeks after Abrini was arrested in April of 2016, when Boufassil was approached and befriended by spies, who allegedly bought him cigarettes, clothes, and a phone, and also gave him £3,000.
He was later arrested upon returning from a Moroccan holiday that he claimed to have paid for with the MI5 money.
Despite vain attempts by prosecutors to keep his claim from being reported, the Guardian reported on Monday that his barrister said, “in Zakaria’s eyes, he feels he was effectively picked up by MI5 and was pumped and dumped.
“He found himself approached by the security service and he was reluctant at first, then more gradually, he told them what he knew about Abrini and the meeting in the park,” Dorian Lovell-Park QC argued in court.
“He was told by MI5 he wasn’t in any trouble and was told they were interested in signing him up or having him on their books.
“He feels he ceased to be of any use to them and he was effectively thrown to the wolves,” Boufassil’s lawyer said.
The prosecution has refused to confirm or deny the defendant’s claims, as is standard MI5 procedure.
Boufassil was convicted along with another man, Mohammed Ali Ahmed, who was given eight years for the same offences.
December 12, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | European Union, MI5, UK |
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US President Barack Obama has just given the Pentagon orders to assassinate commanders of the Al Nusra terror network in Syria. American media reports over the weekend say the new urgency arises from US intelligence fears that al Qaeda-affiliated groups are preparing to mount terror attacks against Western targets from strongholds in Syria.
The purported US «kill list» will be acted on through drone strikes and «intelligence assets». The latter refers, presumably, to US special forces that are already operating in northern Syria alongside Turkish military.
Last week, a similar announcement was carried in the British press, which reported that elite British SAS troops had received orders to kill up to 200 jihadi volunteers from Britain who are suspected to be active in Syria (and Iraq). Again, the same rationale was invoked as in the latest American plan. That the assassination program was to pre-empt terror attacks rebounding on Western states.
A British defense official was quoted as saying that the mission could be the most important ever undertaken by the SAS in its entire 75-year history. «The hunt is on», said the official, «to take out some very bad people».
Significantly, too, the British SAS kill operations in Syria are reportedly being carried out as part of a «multinational effort». That suggests that the Pentagon’s initiative reported this weekend is being coordinated with the British.
However, there is something decidedly odd about this sudden determination by the Americans and British to eliminate terrorists in Syria.
Since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, US, British and other NATO forces have shown meagre success in delivering on official claims of combating al Qaeda-linked terror groups, such as Islamic State (IS, ISIS or Daesh) and Jabhat al Nusra (also known as Jabhat al Fatal al Sham).
A straightforward explanation for this apparent anomaly is that the US and its NATO allies are in reality covertly working with these terror networks as proxies for regime change against the Assad government – a longtime ally of Russia and Iran. What Washington refers to as «moderate rebels» whom it supports are in reality serving as conduits for arms and funds to the known terror groups. In this context, the terror groups have been Western assets in the regime-change war. Therefore, there has been no incentive to liquidate these assets – until now that is. Why now is the telling question.
The recent ceasefire debacles in the battleground northern city of Aleppo have demonstrated a systematic Western terror link. The failure by Washington to deliver on its commitment to separate so-called moderates from extremists is clear evidence that the alleged dichotomy is a hoax. The plain fact is that the US-backed «rebels» are fully integrated with the terror groups. That is, the US and its allies are sponsors of terrorism in Syria.
This has led to the reasonable charge by the Russian government that the US is supporting al Nusra, despite the latter being an internationally proscribed terrorist organization at the heart of the so-called American «war on terror». That charge has been corroborated by claims made by Nusra commanders who say that they have been receiving covert weapons supplies from the Americans. It is also substantiated by recent finds of US weaponry among terrorist dens that have been over-run by the Syrian Arab Army.
So, the question is: what is this latest urgency from the Pentagon to wipe out Nusra’s leadership in Syria really about?
First, let’s note that the implied precision of terrorist «kill lists» that the Americans and British are suddenly working on seems incongruous given that these NATO powers have up to now apparently been unable to furnish Russia with coordinates for extremist bases in Syria.
The Russian Ministry of Defense disclosed last week that the Americans have not provided a single scrap of information on the location of terrorist groups in Syria. The US was obliged to share intelligence on extremist positions as part of the ceasefire plans resolved in September by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
That then marks a seeming curious shift. From not being able to provide any intelligence on terror groups, now we are told in a different context that the US and its British counterpart are urgently moving ahead to carry out decapitation strikes on Nusra and ISIS commanders.
On the British side, reports said that a kill list of hundreds of British jihadis had been drawn up by the intelligence services of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Why wasn’t this information shared before with Russia, as part of the Kerry-Lavrov accord?
Timing is also another telling factor. Obama’s announced order to the Pentagon to ramp up assassination of Nusra leaders comes in the wake of the shock presidential election victory for Donald Trump. Trump’s election last week was an outcome that completely blindsided the White House and the Washington establishment, who thought that Democrat rival Hillary Clinton was a safe bet.
The abrupt US impetus to neutralize Nusra cadres also comes as the Russian navy flotilla takes up position in the Mediterranean off Syria. The flotilla is led by the aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, along with destroyers equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles. The naval formation has been described as the biggest Russian deployment since the end of the Cold War 25 years ago. It will greatly enhance Russia’s air power which already has over the past year transformed the Syrian war into an eminent defeat for the Western-backed insurgents.
Now that nearly three weeks of Russia’s unilateral cessation in air strikes on terror targets in Syria has elapsed to no avail for a surrender by the insurgents, it is anticipated that Russian air power and Syrian forces on the ground are readying for a final, decisive offensive to vanquish the Western-backed proxy war.
President-elect Trump has stated on several occasions his approval of Russian and Syrian anti-terror efforts, unlike the Obama administration, which has sought to hamper them by accusing Moscow and Damascus of «war crimes» against civilians. Russia has rejected those claims as false. It points to recent initiatives to set up humanitarian corridors in Aleppo as evidence that it is trying to minimize civilian casualties. It is the US-backed militants who have sabotaged the humanitarian efforts.
In any case, Trump’s accession to the White House can be expected to give Russia a freer hand to bring the Syrian war to a close. And as noted, increased Russian military forces appear to be poised for this final push.
This is perhaps where the real significance of the latest Pentagon and British terrorist kill program is evinced. If we accept the plausible and proven premise that the Americans and their NATO allies have been covertly funding, arming and directing jihadi terror proxies, then one can expect that there is plenty of evidence within the terrorist ranks of such state-sponsoring criminal connections.
As Russian and Syrian forces eradicate the terrorist remnants one can anticipate that a trove of highly indicting information will be uncovered that grievously imputes Washington, London, Paris and others in Syria’s dirty war. Among the finds too will be hundreds of Nusra and other terrorist operatives who may be willing to testify as to who their handlers were. A huge can of worms awaits to be prized open.
To pre-empt such devastating evidence of Western culpability in waging a covert criminal war in Syria, the Pentagon and its British partner appear to be dispatching their elite troops to perform a little bit of «house cleaning». That cleaning may involve whacking jihadis who know too much.
No wonder the British official said it could the most important mission for the SAS in its 75-year history. Washington and London’s neck is on the line.
November 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, Da’esh, GCHQ, ISIS, MI5, MI6, Obama, Syria, UK, United States |
4 Comments
UK spying agencies secretly and unlawfully collected and stored personal data of Britons for 17 years, according to a court ruling.
MI5, MI6 and GCHQ collected data on everyone’s communications between 1998 and 2015, according to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the watchdog for intelligence agencies.
The agencies tracked individual phone and web use and other confidential information without having adequate safeguards or supervision, senior judges ruled on Monday.
They did not abide by article 8 protecting the right to privacy of the European convention of human rights (ECHR), they added.
“The BPD (bulk personal datasets) regime failed to comply with the ECHR principles, which we have above set out throughout the period prior to its avowal in March 2015. The BCD (bulk communications data) regime failed to comply with such principles in the period prior to its avowal in November 2015, and the institution of a more adequate system of supervision as at the same date,” the ruling stated.
Spying agencies, however, will still be able to continue to do so due to small tweaks to the law that allow them to flout the ruling.
Millie Graham Wood, legal officer at Privacy International, said “today’s judgment is a long overdue indictment of UK surveillance agencies riding roughshod over our democracy and secretly spying on a massive scale.”
“There are huge risks associated with the use of bulk communications data,” Wood said. “It facilitates the almost instantaneous cataloging of entire populations’ personal data.”
According to Privacy campaigners, the ruling was “one of the most significant indictments of the secret use of the government’s mass surveillance powers” since Edward Snowden, a former contractor of the US National Security Agency, who first released the extent of American and British surveillance of citizens in 2013.
Secret documents leaked by Snowden also revealed that the GCHQ and the NSA had monitored more than 1,000 targets in at least 60 countries between 2008 and 2011 by secretly accessing cable networks carrying the world’s phone calls and internet traffic.
October 17, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | European Union, GCHQ, Human rights, MI5, MI6, NSA, United States |
2 Comments
A man who rejected an offer from MI5 to become an informant has been convicted of planning to join Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in a secretive trial at the Old Bailey.
Secret justice, which many claim is at odds with the most fundamental principles of British law, is becoming increasingly normalized.
The latest trial of this kind was that of Somali-born Anas Abdalla, who was alleged to have attempted to smuggle himself out of the UK in 2013 to join IS.
Abdalla was found in a truck full of cannisters at Dover and claimed he was trying to escape years of harassment by MI5 officers who were attempting to recruit him.
The secrecy order specifically pertained to “any evidence which is called by the prosecution which confirms or denies any allegation of contact, or attempted contact, between MI5 and [Abdalla],” and “any allegation… that [Abdalla] would not be allowed by MI5 to live and progress normal expectations and achievements in life.”
Given the level of secrecy, it not is not possible to report on the specific evidence, but Abdalla was convicted of preparing to join IS.
It emerged during the trial that Abdalla had come to believe the security services had caused his girlfriend to leave him, his bank card to stop working and jobs to fall through.
“This is the stuff of nightmares from which there is no escape. This is what happens when you are targeted by the security services and decline to cooperate,”Rajiv Menon QC told the jury as part of Abdalla’s defence.
October 14, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Human rights, ISIL, ISIS, MI5, UK |
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Union boss Len McCluskey has accused British intelligence agencies of using agents provocateurs to undermine Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Unite general secretary said he believed spies were using “dark practices” in an attempt to “stir up trouble” and suggested they could be behind the abuse of MPs on social media.
McCluskey told the Guardian he thought the truth would come out in 30 years, when classified government documents are released into the public domain.
Asked if he believed online abuse of Corbyn’s critics was posted by people trying to discredit his supporters, he said: “Of course, of course. Do people believe for one second that the security forces are not involved in dark practices?
“We found out just a couple of years ago that the chair of my union then, the Transport and General Workers Union, was an MI5 informant at the time that there was a strike taking place that I personally as a worker was involved in. [In] 1972, I was on strike for six weeks. And 30 years later it comes out that the chair of my union at that time was an MI5 informant.”
When asked again if he believed classified documents would reveal the involvement of British intelligence agents in Corbyn’s leadership strife, McCluskey said: “Well I tell you what, anybody who thinks that that isn’t happening doesn’t live in the same world that I live in.
“Do you think that there’s not all kinds of rightwingers who are not secretly able to disguise themselves and stir up trouble? I find it amazing if people think that isn’t happening.”
Labour MP Angela Eagle, who dropped out of the leadership race to back ‘unity candidate’ Owen Smith, dismissed McCluskey’s comments as “over the top.”
“These are serious issues. Rape threats, death threats and organized bullying are not something to be ignored or minimised. We have a democracy and we need Labour politics of solidarity to avoid the kind of anger and hostility that the politics of division inspires,” she said.
There is a historical precedent to provocateurs both in the UK and the US.
In 2009, Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake accused the police of using undercover agents to incite the crowds at the G20 protests in London.
In the US, the FBI ran a secret program called COINTELPRO from 1956 to 1971 which infiltrated groups such as the Black Panther Party and peace activists such as Martin Luther King Jr.
The FBI conducted systematic plots and surveillance to discredit and harass King, including false allegations he was influenced by communists and a threatening letter sent by agents in 1964 calling him “an evil, abnormal beast,” just one year after he delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.
July 22, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Jeremy Corbyn, MI5, UK |
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In the first of a four-part series, Dan Glazebrook and Sukant Chandan look at the recent spate of revelations about the involvement of British security services in facilitating the flow of fighters into Syria.
Over 13 years ago, in March 2003, Britain and the US led an illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, a fellow UN member state. Such a war is deemed to be, in the judgment of the Nuremberg trials that followed World War Two, “not only an international crime” but “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
The mainstream narrative surrounding this war, and the endless catastrophes it bequeathed to Iraq, is that it was the result of a series of unfortunate ‘intelligence failures’: the British government had been led to believe that Iraq posed what Tony Blair called a “clear and present danger” to international security by intelligence that subsequently turned out to be false.
Blair told us that the Iraqi government had an active nuclear weapons program, had acquired uranium from Niger, had mobile chemical weapons factories that could evade UN weapons inspectors, and had stocks of chemical weapons able to hit British troops in Cyprus within 45 minutes.
All of these claims were false, and all were blamed on ‘intelligence failings’, creating an image of an intelligence service totally incapable of distinguishing between credible information and the deluding ravings of crackpots and fantasists, such as the notorious Curveball, the source of many of the various made-up claims later repeated in such grave and reverent tones by the likes of Tony Blair and Colin Powell.
In fact, we now know that sources such as Curveball had already been written off as delusional, compulsive liars by multiple intelligence agencies long before Blair and co got their hands on their outpourings – and the British government was fully aware of this.
The truth is, there were no intelligence failings over the Iraq war. In fact, the intelligence services had been carrying out their job perfectly: on the one hand, making correct assessments of unreliable information, and on the other, providing the government with everything necessary to facilitate its war of aggression. The Iraq war, then, represented a supreme example not of intelligence failure, but intelligence success.
Fast forward to today, and we are again hearing talk of ‘intelligence failings’ and the supposed incompetence of the security services to explain a debilitating Western-sponsored war in the Middle East: this time in Syria.
Earlier this year, British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond admitted that 800 British citizens had gone to join the anti-government terrorist movement in Syria, with at least 50 known to have been killed fighting for Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). The British security and intelligence community, we are to believe, were simply unable to stop them.
Opportunist political opponents blame such shocking statistics on incompetence, while the government and its supporters increasingly weave them into an argument for greater powers and resources for the security services. Both are wrong; and a closer look at some of these so-called ‘intelligence failings’ makes this very clear.
In December 2013, it emerged that MI5 had tried to recruit Michael Adebolajo, one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, just a few weeks before Rigby’s murder. Adebalajo had been on the radar of both MI5 and MI6 for over 10 years. He had been under surveillance in no less than five separate MI5 investigations, including one set up specifically to watch him. He was known to have been in contact with the senior leadership of Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, based in Yemen, and he had been arrested in Kenya on a speedboat on the way to Somalia with five other youths, where he was suspected of hoping to join Al Shabaab.
The Kenyans were furious when they handed him over to the Brits only for him to be turned loose, presumably to continue with his recruitment activities.
The following month, 17-year-old Aseel Muthana left his family home in Cardiff to join rebel fighters in Syria. His brother Nasser had left three months earlier, and his family were worried that Aseel would try to join him. So they confiscated his passport, and informed the police of their concerns. The police kept the family under close scrutiny. They even arrived at his house at 5pm the day he left for Syria, to be told he hadn’t been seen since the night before. He boarded a flight at 8.35pm that night, using alternative travel documents issued by the Foreign Office. His family were horrified that he had been allowed to travel, without a passport, despite all their warnings.
A similar case occurred in June 2015, when three sisters from Bradford traveled to Syria – it is thought to join IS – taking their nine young children with them. Again, the family had been under intense scrutiny from the police ever since their brother went to join IS in Syria earlier that year. And far from being unaware of the risk of their being recruited, counter-terrorist police were, it appears, deeply complicit in their recruitment.
A letter from the family’s lawyers said they were “alarmed” by the police allegedly having been actively promoting and encouraging contact with the brother believed to be fighting in Syria: “It would appear that there has been a reckless disregard as to the consequences of any such contact [with] the families of those whom we represent,” the lawyers said, and continued: “Plainly, by the NECTU [North East Counter Terrorism Unit] allowing this contact they have been complicit in the grooming and radicalizing of the women.”
October 2014 saw the trial of Moazzam Begg, for various terrorism-related offences. Begg had admitted to training British recruits in Syria – but in his defense, he made the incendiary claim that MI5 had explicitly given him the green light for his frequent visits in a meeting they had arranged with him. MI5 admitted it was true, and the trial collapsed.
Six months later, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an interview with Aimen Dean, a founding member of Al-Qaeda who was subsequently recruited by MI6 as a spy. Part of his work for MI6, he said, involved encouraging young impressionable Muslims to go and join the ranks of Al-Qaeda.
Then in June 2015, Abu Muntasir, known as the godfather of British jihadists, thought to have recruited “thousands” of British Muslims to fight in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Bosnia and Chechnya, gave an interview to the Guardian, repenting his actions. He explained that he came back from fighting in Afghanistan to “create the link and clear the paths. I came back [from war] and opened the door and the trickle turned to a flood. I inspired and recruited, I raised funds and bought weapons, not just a one-off but for 15 to 20 years. Why I have never been arrested I don’t know.”
That same month, a second trial collapsed, for much the same reasons as Begg’s. Bherlin Gildo was arrested in October 2014 on his way from Copenhagen to Manila. He was accused of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist. The Guardian reported that the prosecution “collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain’s security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead.”
In January 2016, it was revealed that Siddhartha Dhar traveled to Syria in September 2014 while on police bail for terrorism offences – the sixth time he had been arrested for terror-related offences, and not long after MI5 had reportedly tried to recruit him. Police had demanded he hand in his passport, but did not follow it up; this was despite the fact that he had revealed – live on BBC morning television no less – that he would “love to live in the Islamic State.” He later posted pictures of himself posing with guns in Raqqa, and is suspected of being the so-called ‘new Jihadi John’, appearing in an IS video executing suspected spies. The original ‘Jihadi John’ – British-Kuwaiti Mohammed Emwazi – had also been well known to the British security services, having – just as Adebolajo and Dhar – apparently been offered a job by MI5.
Is this all just a ‘catalogue of blunders’, more ‘intelligence failings’ on a massive scale?
These cases demonstrate a couple of irrefutable points. Firstly, the claim that the security services would have needed more power and resources to have prevented the absconding is clearly not true.
Since 1995, the Home Office has operated what it calls a ‘Warnings Index’: a list of people ‘of interest’ to any branch of government, who will then be ‘flagged up’ should they attempt to leave the country. Given that every single one of these cases was well known to the authorities, the Home Office had, for whatever reason, decided either not to put them on the Warnings Index, or to ignore their attempts to leave the country when they were duly flagged up. That is, the government decided not to use the powers already at its disposal to prevent those at the most extreme risk of joining the Syrian insurgency from doing so.
Secondly, these cases show that British intelligence and security clearly prioritize recruitment of violent so-called Islamists over disruption of their activities. The question is – what exactly are they recruiting them for?
At his trial, Bherlin Gildo’s lawyers provided detailed evidence that the British government itself had been arming and training the very groups that Gildo was being prosecuted for supporting. Indeed, Britain has been one of the most active and vocal supporters of the anti-government insurgency in Syria since its inception, support which continued undiminished even after the sectarian leadership and direction of the insurgency was privately admitted by Western intelligence agencies in 2012. Even today, with IS clearly the main beneficiaries of the country’s destabilization, and Al-Qaeda increasingly hegemonic over the other anti-government forces, David Cameron continues to openly ally himself with the insurgency.
Is it really such a far-fetched idea that the British state, openly supporting a sectarian war against the Ba’athist government in Syria, might also be willfully facilitating the flow of British fighters to join this war? Britain’s history of collusion with sectarian paramilitaries as a tool of foreign policy certainly suggests this may be so. This history, in Ireland, Afghanistan and the Arab peninsula, and its role in shaping British policy today, will be the subject of the articles to follow.
Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer who has written for RT, Counterpunch, Z magazine, the Morning Star, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Independent and Middle East Eye, amongst others. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and ‘austerity’. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.
April 4, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Abu Muntasir, Africa, al-Qaeda, Aseel Muthana, ISIL, ISIS, MI5, Michael Adebolajo, Middle East, Syria, UK |
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The publication on 21 January 2016 of the report by British Judge Sir Robert Owen on the death of Alexander Litvinenko was predictably seized upon by anti-Russian elements as confirmation of their conviction that Russia in general and President Putin in particular were the personification of modern day evil.
Almost completely absent amidst the anti-Russian hysteria was any perspective on the history of Mr Litvinenko1; the circumstances leading up to his death; and any understanding of what a totally flawed exercise Owen’s inquiry actually was.
Who Was Alexander Litvinenko?
Litvinenko was generally described in the western media as a Russian defector, vehement critic of Vladimir Putin, and the victim of polonium 210 poisoning delivered to him while taking tea at an upmarket London hotel by his teatime companions Andrei Lugovoi and Dimitry Kovtun.
The motive for his killing was generally portrayed as the removal of a critic by the Russian power structure in general, and President Putin in particular, via the use of the two Russian agents.
The actual evidence to support any of these contentions was never better than murky at best. That murkiness was not resolved by the publication of Sir Robert Owen’s report, which in many respects, sets a new low in inquiry procedures and the reports that flow from them.
Litvinenko was formerly a low level KGB officer whose main tasks seem to have been in the investigation of organized crime. There was much to be investigated in Yeltsin’s Russia in the 1990s.
Litvinenko resigned from the KGB and through most of the 1990s he worked for private security firms. The frequent media descriptions of Litvinenko as a “spy” therefore seem somewhat fanciful.
Litvinenko fell foul of the Russian authorities and spent some time in jail. He fled to the United Kingdom in 2000 (having had his asylum application turned down by the Americans). Again, the description of Litvinenko as a “defector” is also somewhat fanciful. He was, in fact, a fugitive from the Russian justice system.
Between his flight in 2000 and 23 November 2006 when he died, presumably by poisoning from Polonium 210, Litvinenko lived in London. During this time he had contact with, and worked for, a number of people and organisations. The persons who feature most prominently in this history are the aforementioned Lugovoi and Kovtun with whom he had numerous dealings; convicted felon Mario Scaramella (of whom more below), and fellow Russian émigré Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky was also a notable critic of Mr Putin.
Berezovsky was also Litvinenko’s employer for several years in London although precisely in what capacity remains unclear. Litvinenko also had business dealings with Lugovoi, Kovtun and Scaramella. Significantly, after years of denial by his widow Marina, it was acknowledged that Litvinenko was also working for the British Security Services MI5 and MI6, although the details remain suppressed by Judge Owen.
Evidence given to the Owen inquiry by both MI5 and MI6 were given in closed session, and the report merely says that it cannot publish the details of that evidence. The suppression orders were made pursuant to a directive from the Home Secretary Therese May. The western media saw no reason to comment on this direct interference in a judicial proceeding by a member of the executive branch of government.
Because of these suppression orders we do not know what the MI5 and MI6 witnesses said or whether they were cross-examined by counsel assisting the inquiry. It is only one of the many unsatisfactory aspects of the inquiry.
How did Litvinenko Die?
Even the exact details of Litvinenko’s death are classified. We are told it was from polonium 210, but the autopsy report itself remains classified. This is an extraordinary situation, given that Owen used the alleged fact of polonium poisoning to attribute responsibility to Russia and its alleged agents. It is also extraordinary given the propaganda purposes to which the Owen’s report has been put.2
If, in fact, Litvinenko died of polonium poisoning, diagnosed only two hours before he died and three weeks after it was ingested, the obvious question is how was that polonium ingested? That in turn would be strong evidence as to who was responsible for causing the ingestion, assuming for the moment that Litvinenko did not poison himself, either deliberately or accidentally as has been frequently suggested.3
The popular version much liked by the western media and duly reported by Owen himself as to causality, was that the polonium was somehow slipped into his pot of tea at the Millennium Hotel where he was with Lugovoi and Kovtun. Despite the presence of video cameras at the Millennium there is no evidence available to show how this was actually done.
This hypothesis of polonium in the teapot is a good example of the fantastical nature of the Owen Report. Polonium is a rare, hugely expensive and highly dangerous substance. It glows blue when exposed to the air which would itself presumably excite curiosity. It cannot be handled with bare hands and even exposure to the air creates a danger for the perpetrator.
A measure of its dangerousness is that later investigators, when examining possible sites associated with Litvinenko’s presence, wore protective clothing with the utmost security. That was weeks after the ingestion, which one will recall, was only diagnosed two hours before death and hence three weeks after it as ingested.
There are other problems with the alleged scenario presented by Owen. The teapot, into which the polonium was allegedly slipped, was not examined until several weeks after the alleged poisoning, at which time we are told that it had readings “off the charts”. This is in spite of multiple washings in the intervening six weeks, and not a single case of a staff member at the Millennium being affected. That alone would be a fruitful area for cross-examination in a proper inquiry.
The problems do not end there. Litvinenko had been overseas prior to the meetings with Scaramella in the early afternoon and later Lugovoi and Kovtun at the Pine Bar of the Millennium on 1 November 2006. He arrived at Heathrow at approximately 11.30 am. The plane tested negative for polonium, which would appear to rule out Litvinenko carrying it into the country.
Litvinenko then went to the Itsu sushi bar for a lunch meeting with Mario Scaramella. This sushi bar tested positive for polonium. This is hours before Litvinenko had contact with Lugovoi and Kovtun. I will come back to this point.
Precisely where Litvinenko spent the hours between his meeting with Scaramella and his later date at the Pine Bar is unclear. There is some evidence to suggest that he was at Berezovsky’s office, which was nearby. Litvinenko was known to use Berezovsky’s photocopying facilities. That office also tested positive for polonium, which again raises a number of possibilities other than the scenario that Owen was determined to portray.
This evidence strongly suggests that Litvinenko was, in fact, contaminated prior to his tea meeting with Lugovoi and Kovtun at the Pine Bar. In a proper inquiry this fact alone, if established, would be of huge significance and utterly destroy the Owen scenario.
Immediately prior to his death it was initially reported that Litvinenko had made a death bed statement in which he accused Mr Putin of being responsible. Litvinenko had a track record of making bizarre allegations against Mr Putin, unhindered by any need to produce actual evidence.
That death bed allegation, made to an employee of Berezovsky, was later admitted to be completely fabricated. In the interim, however, it became fodder for the hysterical anti-Putin, anti-Russia campaigns of the tabloid press and those of Rupert Murdoch in particular.4
Part of the media disinformation at the time following Litvinenko’s death was that polonium was exceedingly rare and produced only in Russia. This is simply untrue. Any country with a nuclear reactor can produce polonium. Among the countries that had nuclear reactors in 2006 but were not subject to IAEA inspections, were South Africa, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea.
Russia is a producer of polonium, as are France and the United Kingdom. A fact not mentioned by the western media at the time was that Russia exported polonium to the United States at a cost of $2 million per gram.
That raises another obvious question. Why would an assassin use such an inherently dangerous and highly expensive substance when a bullet through the head is quicker, highly effective immediately, does not leave the same scientific trail and can be done well away from the world of closed circuit cameras that are ubiquitous in London?
Although there has never been an inquest into Litvinenko’s death that reached a conclusion the British government leapt to the conclusion that Lugovoi and Kovtun had been responsible and filed an application for their extradition with the Russian authorities.5
The most reasonable inference open on this evidence is that the purpose of the extradition request was to set the scene for further denunciation of the Russian government for “not co-operating” when the extradition request was denied as it was bound to be.
The reason for the refusal was not because of any lack of willingness to co-operate by the Russian authorities, but because there was no legal basis upon which the request could be granted. Article 61 of the Russian constitution prohibits the extradition of any Russian citizen, as the British surely knew.
Even without the constitutional prohibition it is doubtful that the extradition request would have been granted. In order to persuade a court to grant an extradition request, the requesting authority must adduce sufficient evidence that there is at least a prima facie case against the accused.
In a homicide case, one of the essential documents required is the autopsy report showing exactly how the victim died. The British request did not enclose such a report, and even today it has still not been released.
One of the prime reasons for the continued suppression of this vital document is reported in the Daily Telegraph (hardly a supporter of modern Russia). It was reported that there were two separate polonium “spikes” in Litvinenko’s body.
The compelling inference from that evidence is that Litvinenko was exposed to polonium 210 at two different times. That immediately undermines Owen’s case of the poisonous teapot and the culpability of Lugovoi and Kovtun.
It is not only the timing of the ingestion that is crucial. The ancillary question is how the polonium was ingested. For that, one needs at a minimum the autopsy slides from the forensic examination of Litvinenko’s vital organs. That information was also absent from the British extradition request. Neither is it to be found in the Owen report.
On that basis a Russian Judge would be entirely justified in asking the obvious question: where is your evidence for your allegation that Litvinenko was fatally poisoned at the Pine Bar by polonium 210 administered to him by Lugovoi and/or Kovtun?
The Coronial Process
In all cases where a person’s death is unusual in any way a coronial inquest is held to determine the circumstances under which the person died. The coroner is specifically prohibited from establishing criminal liability for the death.
The original coroner did not reach a conclusion of any description. Sir Robert Owen replaced him. It was clear that Owen sought to circumvent the legal limits placed on the coronial inquiry. He began to carry out what amounted to a criminal investigation. As the American writer William Dunkerley makes clear in his two books6 on the subject, Owen was acting outside his jurisdiction to such an extent that he was officially reprimanded by the Home Secretary Therese May in July 2013.
Again according to Dunkerley, May was resisting Owen’s request that the coronial inquiry be converted into a “public” inquiry, which would have given him vastly greater powers as to the taking of evidence and other matters.
The British government maintained their opposition to a public inquiry until July 2014 when the government did a volte-face and authorised a public inquiry. Rather astonishingly, Owen was appointed the inquiry head, notwithstanding his manifest bias as what Dunkerley describes as a “man on a mission” to pin the blame on Russia.
What brought about this sudden change of heart by the British government, nearly eight years after Litvinenko had died? It is probably a fair inference that the shooting down of MH17 over Eastern Ukraine on 14 July 2014 gave rise to a fresh outburst of anti-Russian hysteria. That hysteria was assiduously cultivated by the same elements of the western media that had promoted the notion of Russian responsibility for Litvinenko’s death.
The Inquiry Report
The UK government passed the Inquiries Act in 2005. This Act permits the setting up of an Inquiry in lieu of a coronial inquest. The Act has been used on other occasions where inquiries into well-publicized deaths were preferred to be kept hidden from too close a public scrutiny.7
Where the Litvinenko case differed was that there had been a coronial inquiry in existence from the time of Litvinenko’s death in 2006 right up until July 2014 when the inquiry was set up.
A British coronial inquest has a number of advantages. The evidence is given in public. Relevant witnesses can be cross-examined by counsel for all legally interested parties. A jury gives the verdict. Apportioning guilt is specifically unavailable to a jury. The available verdicts are natural causes; suicide; misadventure (which includes murder but also accidents); or an open verdict where the evidence is insufficient to point to a cause.
The public inquiry has none of these advantages or safeguards. The term “public” is itself a misnomer. It can, and in this case certainly did, hear evidence in secret, hear it from unidentified witnesses, and have evidence suppressed. Further, the evidence is not open to cross-examination from counsel for persons potentially subject to an adverse finding. Even when cross-examination occurs, that in turn can be suppressed.
In the present case neither Lugovoi nor Kovtun were present at the hearings, nor did counsel represent them. Their initial willingness to attend and give evidence in addition to the statements they had already given to the Police disappeared when the nature of the inquiry was changed in July 2014.
They were refused the right to know the nature of the evidence against them (as was the case with the extradition request). This was a fact the Judge omitted to mention when criticizing them for their non-attendance. They were not permitted to be represented by counsel in their absence, something that is permissible under the rules.
In many respects an Inquiry is akin to the infamous Star Chamber Courts in the UK from the late 15th century until the middle of the 17th century. Witnesses and defendants were examined in secret, although they did have notice of the charges against them. They also had the right to be legally represented. Over time the Star Chamber evolved into an instrument of repression and abuse of power by the monarchy and the Courts. Juries that returned unfavourable verdicts (from the executive’s point of view) were punished. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1640 abolished them. They have now returned in modern form.
The Inquiries Act removed the possibility of inconvenient jury verdicts by abolishing them in the case of inquiries.
Even given the latitude of a public inquiry to conduct its proceedings in secret, if its findings are to have any credibility it must nonetheless observe some basic legal principles.
Under British law an accused person has as a minimum:
- The right to know the evidence against them beforehand.
- The right to challenge by cross-examination the witnesses for the prosecution.
- The right to be legally represented.
- The right to challenge the admissibility of evidence on the grounds, for example, that is irrelevant, inadmissible opinion, hearsay or otherwise contrary to the rules of evidence.
- The right to a finding that is only open on the admissible evidence to the standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
- To begin the trial with the presumption of innocence that is only rebutted by the weight of evidence to the standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
- The onus of discharging that burden of proof rests with the prosecution from beginning to end.
It is not an overstatement to say that the Owen Inquiry violated each and every one of those basic principles. As such, this was not so much an inquiry to establish the truth, but a travesty of what was once favourably known as “British justice”. Alexander Mercouris rightly called it an absurd show trial.8
I also agree with Mercouris’ analysis when he says that the inquiry was a farce, and just the latest twist in a long running smear campaign against Russia and its President. Cunningham reached a similar conclusion.9
One aspect alone illustrates many of these points. The Judge concluded that the murder was “probably” carried out by Lugovoi and Kovtun; was “probably” ordered by the head of the FSB; who in turn “probably” took his orders from President Putin.
“Probably” is not a word that belongs in a finding of criminal liability. Either it is proven beyond reasonable doubt or it is not, in which case the presumption of innocence prevails.
And the evidence Owen presented for this remarkable conclusion? If there is any, Owen did not cite it other than by reference to secret evidence that we are not allowed to know about. There is no possible reasonable basis upon which one can test the veracity of claims such as these.
In order for Nikolai Patrushev (the head of the FSB) and Mr Putin to be held liable as the principals for the crimes allegedly committed by Lugovoi and Kovtun there has to be evidence that they were acting on the instructions of, or on behalf of, the former. There is no such evidence. Assertions of “probability” are in this context farcical.
On the other hand there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Lugovoi and Kovtun were two of the most unlikely assassins. Neither had any known training in carrying out such a dangerous task. Neither had any links to the FSB although Lugovoi had been with its predecessor the KGB until the mid-1990s in what appears to have been a bodyguard role.10
Nor could any plausible motive be attributed to the Russian State for eliminating Litvinenko. During the six years Litvinenko lived in London prior to his death he had made a number of allegations against Mr Putin, but then so had a lot of other people who are alive to this day.
If Russia had wanted to eliminate Mr Litvinenko, there were vastly better ways to do it rather than use two amateurs with a volatile, highly dangerous and expensive substance to carry out the task.
There was, in fact, evidence of motive before the inquiry. It came from Dr Yulia Svetlichnaya, a London based post-graduate scholar, who gave evidence that the Judge accepted. That evidence was to the effect that Litvinenko had been talking about blackmailing persons before his death.11
Those persons included criminal elements that Litvinenko had been investigating (also his task with the KGB) who have a well-documented propensity for eliminating people who threaten their activities. Yet the Judge considered none of this worthy of further examination.
The Judge did, however, place considerable weight on the evidence of Boris Berezovsky. Quite why he should do so remains a mystery. Berezovsky himself is now dead, allegedly by suicide, so he is not around to enlighten us as to his change of character.
The Judge did have the benefit of previous judicial views on Mr Berezovsky. In the case of Berezovsky v Abramovich Her Honour Mrs Justice Gloster had this to say about Mr Berezovsky:
An unimpressive and inherently unreliable witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept which could be moulded to suit his purposes.
This less than flattering assessment did not seem to deter Justice Owen.
Mr Litvinenko lingered painfully for three weeks before dying, the medical staff inexplicably unable to identify polonium as the cause of his illness. Had they done so in a timely fashion he might have been saved.
Before he died, however, Litvinenko did nominate his killer and I am not referring to the manifestly false allegation referred to above.12 The man he pointed to was Mario Scaramella, a convicted felon who also happened to be an expert in nuclear waste.
Litvinenko had lunch with Scaramella at a sushi bar before his evening meeting with Lugovoi and Kovtun at the Pine Bar. Scaramella apparently did not eat or drink anything at that lunch, but he did require hospital treatment shortly thereafter for a mild case of polonium poisoning.13
Disregarding the wildly improbable, the logical possibilities therefore seem to be:
- Litvinenko was himself carrying the plutonium, which was shown to Scaramella thereby causing Scaramella’s later symptoms. This does not explain why Litvinenko would ingest the substance voluntarily. Recall also Litvinenko pointing the finger at Scaramella as the source of his illness and there seems no other plausible explanation for that accusation.
- Litvinenko was already infected when he met Scaramella. This would be consistent with the twin “spikes” of polonium poisoning said to have been found in Litvinenko’s body.
- Litvinenko deliberately ingested the polonium himself. This seems the least likely hypothesis.
- Litvinenko was known to be trading in nuclear materials (but ignored by the media) accidentally poisoned himself. This was the hypothesis most favoured by Epstein in his 2008 article and it still best fits the known facts.
- Scaramella poisoned Litvinenko at some stage through the course of the sushi lunch (which he himself did not partake of). Scaramella’s abstinence from food or drink is odd to say the least.
This is not to accuse Scaramella of doing the deed, but it is a logical possibility that the Judge did not seem to consider despite the supporting evidence, including Scaramella’s own illness that is otherwise difficult to explain.
Instead the Judge relied upon a series of bizarre conclusions that paid scant regard to logic, the evidence, or even the most basic principles of criminal procedure. As such the real victims here are not only the unfortunate Mr Litvinenko but also to what was once known as “British justice.” In the light of this travesty of a report, that term now seem to be an oxymoron.
James O’Neill is a former academic. Since 1984 he has practised as a barrister, first in New Zealand and since 2002 in Brisbane, Australia. His special area of interest is international law, and he writes on geopolitical events from a legal perspective. James has been published in New Eastern Outlook, Counterpunch, New Matilda and elsewhere. He can be reached at joneill@qldbar.asn.au.
February 12, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | Litvinenko, MI5, MI6, Russia, UK |
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