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Showing posts with label British War Crimes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British War Crimes. Show all posts
Jonathon Porritt ★  I’ve finally worked out what Tony Blair still exists for . . . 

. . .  providing comfort to future war criminals that it's still possible, as a former war criminal, to be accepted in polite society.

Blair has never been indicted as a war criminal. Of course he hasn't. But he played a pivotal role in enabling the assault on Iraq in March 2003, lying time after time, about “high level intelligence” confirming the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. George Bush would probably have invaded Iraq anyway, but Blair shares direct accountability for the chaos that ensued over the next decade — including the death of at least 500,000 Iraqi citizens.

As Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission between 2000 and 2009, I reported directly to Tony Blair for seven years. For the first three years, it was extremely rewarding. He seriously understood the significance of the climate crisis, and was interested enough in sustainable development more broadly to make it possible for the Commission to develop effective working relationships (through the Cabinet Office) with at least eight government departments. Direct access was frequent and taken seriously.

It all changed in 2003.

Continue @  Jonathon Porritt.

Tony Blair 🪶 Once A War Criminal

Declassified UK ✒ Written by Richard Norton-Taylor. Recommended by Christy Walsh.

The famous ‘who dares wins’ regiment finally faces serious scrutiny over its Afghan night raids, even as those involved in a cover up are promoted to highest office. 

At last the lid is coming off special forces operations, revealing specific and detailed accusations that senior British military figures have been desperate to suppress.

It is alleged that troops from the elite Special Air Service (SAS) took the law into their own hands and committed “multiple murders” that were “deliberately covered up”.

This was how Sir Charles Haddon-Cave, an appeal court judge, last week described evidence he had heard from British special forces officers.

Haddon-Cave made the comments at the inquiry he chairs into 80 suspicious deaths on SAS counter-terrorism raids in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013.

So far, the evidence has been heard mostly in secret. But despite the best efforts of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to block it, damning details are becoming public.

And the repercussions in one of the most secret corners of the British state should be huge.

‘Unacceptable’

The inquiry was forced on a reluctant MoD after increasingly credible claims of cold-blooded murder . . .  

Continue reading @ Declassified UK.

Wall Of Secrecy Around SAS ‘Murders’ Begins To Crumble

Richard Norton Taylor ✒ writing in Declassified UK . Recommended by Christy Walsh. 


Johnny Mercer changed the law to protect soldiers from “vexatious” prosecutions. Now the minister admits he always thought some were guilty of war crimes. 

Britain’s most senior military figures took part in a concerted attempt to suppress allegations that SAS troops committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

And a government minister who successfully campaigned to protect soldiers from prosecution believed some of the allegations were true.

This is the remarkable evidence about a “culture of omerta” – a code of silence, originally attributed to the Italian mafia – within Britain’s Special Forces that emerged this week at an independent inquiry in London.

It is examining the conduct of elite SAS troops in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013, including the killing of 33 people in eleven night raids in 2011.

The inquiry has already heard from one senior unidentified British Special Forces soldier who believed SAS troops deliberately falsified post-operation reports to cover up what they had done.

The revelations only emerged after a £10 million internal MoD investigation, Operation Northmoor, failed to discover evidence of SAS wrongdoing and was shut down.

Continue reading @ Declassified UK.

Veterans Minister Suspected S.A.S. Of War Crimes

Richard Norton Taylor - writing in Declassified UK. Recommended by Christy Walsh.

12-October-2023

An independent inquiry has heard shocking allegations of how SAS soldiers engaged in a “widespread and systematic pattern of unlawful extrajudicial killings” - which were known at the highest levels of the UK government, even in Downing St, but covered up for years.

The judge-led inquiry was forced on a reluctant Ministry of Defence (MoD) after allegations surfaced repeatedly in the media before families of Afghans killed by SAS troops, including the execution of Afghan males of “fighting age” between 2010 and 2013, took the claims to the high court.

The inquiry has heard devastating allegations, some of them privately backed at the time by serving SAS troops, that were persistently ignored. Commanders attempted to block investigations by the military police, according to detailed claims backed up by witnesses.

Computer records of SAS activities are reported to have been permanently and deliberately wiped before they could be shown to military investigators.

The inquiry is particularly significant with the combination of a catalogue of allegations backed up by detailed evidence shedding unprecedented light on the SAS, the least accountable of organs of the British state.

Continue reading @ Declassified UK.

Whitehall’s Cover-Up Of SAS Killings In Afghanistan

Christy Walsh ✍ On 6th March, Colonel Richards Kemp tweeted about the summary execution of 3 unarmed IRA volunteers in Gibraltar. I quote:

Operation Flavius. Today, 1988, 3 IRA terrorists intent on mass murder of British forces in Gibraltar were killed by the SAS with back up from 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regt. The Israeli intelligence service Mossad played a key role in intelligence & surveillance.

The next day he had an article published in The Daily Telegraph condemning the Russians for a similar war crime of the summary execution of an unarmed Ukrainian soldier- who was also engaged in violent resistent to the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine. Kemp had this to say of the Russian war crime:

A shocking video has been circulating in the last few days that appears to show a Ukrainian prisoner of war being gunned down by his Russian captors as he utters what he knows are the last words he will ever say: ‘Slava Ukraini’ – glory to Ukraine. This image of heroic defiance against appalling brutality should send a chilling message to Vladimir Putin after a year of butchery in Ukraine: you can murder and torture us all you like, but you cannot defeat our will to fight.

The only meaningful difference between these summary executions is The Rome Statute, which was adopted on 17th July 1998. The Rome Statute created the International Criminal Court (ICC) where war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity can be prosecuted. Proof of that fact has just arisen, as of 19th March 2023, an Australian SAS Soldier has been charged with the war crime of “shooting dead a prone Afghan man, who is lying with his hands up, in a wheat field in southern Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province.”[1]

It should never be forgotten that Brit Colonels like Kemp invented narrative warfare to excuse the atrocities they and their soldiers have committed around the world. Did you know that during the Brits occupation of places like Malaysia and Kenya they routinely severed the heads and hands of their victims?

In blazing heat or sweltering humidity they lugged the dead weight of sacks over open plains or through impenetrable jungles containing numerous hands and decapitated heads back to the villages. This is where narrative warfare kicks in - the heads were stuck on spikes and villagers rounded up, a terror tactic and war crime? Not according to Kemp’s predecessors: it was on the auspices to see if the villagers could identify the deceased. The severed hands were necessary for fingerprinting purposes back at the barrack. Photographs of jungle patrols back then confirm they had cameras; they could have photographed the corpses and saved days of marching while lugging decomposing human remains about with them. And a simple ink pad and some paper would have been a much lighter and civilised means of taking fingerprints.

On a more progressive note: The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine has immeasurably improved the way the ICC operates. In previous atrocities in places like Rwanda or Sarajevo the ICC did not get involved until the conflicts were over and investigations can take decades. They faced incredible hurdles in the recovery of evidence and tracing witnesses.

In areas where the Russians have been forced to retreat hundreds of bodies are found.[2] The number of crimes registered by Ukraine’s general prosecutor surpassed 11,200 and Unicef reported that at least 100 children were killed in the war in April alone. On 12th May 2022 the first war crimes trial got under way. Vadim Shishimarin a 21-year-old Russian soldier appeared in the dock accused of killing an unarmed civilian. He faces life in prison if convicted.[3]

In another case, which is likely to he heard in absentia, a soldier named as Mikhail Romanov is accused of breaking into a house in a village in the Brovarsky region in March, murdering a man and repeatedly raping his wife while “threatening her and her child with violence and weapons”. A second soldier also raped the 33-year-old woman and it is understood prosecutors believe they know his identity.

The UN has received “credible allegations” that Russian forces had used cluster munitions in populated areas. The UN has despatched nearly 60 UN human rights monitors in Ukraine, and have verified 77 incidents in which medical facilities were damaged, including 50 hospitals. Ukrainian cities have been pounded by airstrikes and heavy shelling in Russia’s five-week-old invasion, killing civilians and destroying hospitals in acts that may amount to war crimes.[4] Throughout Ukraine, the United Nations has so far documented 8317 civilian deaths and 13.892 injuries since the war began.[5]

Most notably, The ICC has issued arrest warrants for President Putin and his commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia since Moscow's invasion in 2022. The indoctrination of these children into Russian culture could elevate the charges to genocide. Of course there is slim chance Putin will ever be arrested unless Ukraine win the war and he is handed over as part of any settlement.

Back to Kemp: in 1978 he was an infantry platoon commander when he experienced his first enemy fire on the Falls Road. In total he did 8 tours of the occupied 6 counties and at some point he was wounded in a mortar attack in South Armagh. By Kemp's own account he has spent most his life fighting terrorism and insurgency, commanding British troops on the front line of some of the world’s toughest hotspots, including Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. More recently, he spent his time in Downing Street as head of the international terrorism team at the Joint Intelligence Committee. He has Chaired the Cobra Intelligence Group, responsible for coordinating the work of the national intelligence agencies, including MI5 and MI6. In retirement, he is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, a militarist think tank of war mongers, and a board member of Friends of Israel Initiative – I presume Kemp is the Mossad connection involved in Gibraltar. (See: Colonel Richard Kemp.


[1] Former SAS soldier arrested and charged in NSW for alleged war crime over killing of Afghan civilian.


⏩ Christy Walsh was stitched up by the British Ministry of Defence in a no jury trial and spent many years in prison as a result.

Colonel Richard Kemp Distinguising British And Russian War Crimes

Mick Hall ☭ Like the Russian military in the Ukraine today, the USA and its NATO allies are equally adept at bombing and terrorising people from their homes.

In the last 30 years, with murderous intent, NATO have been involved in armed conflicts against Serbia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria. And it’s not whataboutery to point this out.

Yes, the Russian state invaded parts of the old Soviet Union, and their current war with the Ukraine is plain wrong: they need to ceasefire and remove there troops. However one of the reasons Putin had the confidence to invade the Ukraine was because the US, UK and NATO did much the same in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya - and when it went belly up walked away scot-free without a backward glance.

Indeed many of those responsible for the mayhem and murder in these aforementioned countries have prospered. For example Tony Blair who is culpable in the fate of approximately five hundred thousand dead Iraqis accumulated vast sums of money after he left office, and has hovered up even more ill gotten gains from satraps around the world. He appears on UK TV and writes for influential news papers like the Guardian and The Times. He was appointed a ‘knight companion of the most noble order of the garter’ by the Crown in the 2022 New Years honours list.

Yet as far as the MSM is concerned NATO are always on the side of the angels, a defensive force which is keeping the peace in Europe; which is nonsensical and totally untrue if you look at its more recent history.

Hardly a day goes by now without some armchair warrier in parliament or in a TV studio claiming Putin is committing war crimes in the Ukraine and should be brought before the war crimes tribunal at The Hague. This may well be true. In all probability he is committing war crimes. But as British or US citizens we need to concentrate on this question: why hasn’t Bush, Blair, Cameron and their underlings been tried for war crimes when they clearly committed crimes against humanity? We should never forget that our main enemy is at home.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

MSM And Westminster Politicians Are Adorned In Khaki ✑ And Not For The First Time

Fra Hughes ✒ Every Empire is guilty of war crimes, the British Empire was no different. 

First published in
Al Mayadeen English 

Every Empire is guilty of war crimes. Executing enemy combatants on the battlefield. Destroying hospitals, watercourses, and infrastructure. Carpet bombing cities. Murdering civilians. Torture. Raping men, women, and children. Starving the enemy into submission. Genocide. Mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing.


The British Empire was no different.

From North America to Australia. From New Zealand to Zimbabwe. From Ireland to Palestine, Britain has been accused of heinous war crimes against indigenous populations while extracting the wealth, minerals, and natural resources of those countries it occupied.

Through military occupation, colonization, and financial supremacy, empires have built vast fortunes, accrued in many countries, while the people's culture and habitats have been destroyed.

By 1913 the British Empire ruled 23% of the world's surface and 412 million of its people. A quarter of the globe.

Rarely if ever have these empires been held to account. To the victors go the spoils of war. The winners rewrite history and glorify their achievements in terms of morality, religion, or humanity.

Wars are always about power, money, and profit.

The establishment runs for the enrichment of the few.

We have gone from slavery to zero-hour contracts and the minimum wage.

Those who claim to rule in our name are ofttimes profiteers and corrupt self-serving politicians and monarchies.

They say the first casualty of war is truth.

When governments use propaganda to manipulate the public discourse for war such as the false claim of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq the truth is simply ignored, hidden, spun, or abandoned.

The truth is what your government tells you to be the truth.

With complicit media and compliant corporations, the truth is disguised and the lie becomes reality.

Malcolm X, famously said, ‘If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people doing the oppressing.’

Britain stands accused of numerous war crimes in the Northeast of Ireland.

Between 1969 and 1998 the British government was at war with the Irish Republican Army and the community from which it drew its support and legitimacy.

Having partitioned Ireland in 1920-1921, the scene was set for a national war of liberation, by the indigenous people, against foreign military occupation and an imposed colonial settler regime.

In 1998 with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, many Republicans eschewed the right to resort to armed resistance, to remove the last vestiges of British imperialism in Ireland. They agreed to transition to political action only and to accept a vote for the possible reunification of Ireland at some future unspecified date.

As part of this process, a legacy consultation was begun.

The British army, its locally recruited militia, the Ulster Defence Regiment, its locally recruited police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary - now the Police Service of Northern Ireland - and its myriad of intelligence services, undercover troops, and informers stand accused of murder, torture, assassinations, political killings and much much more.

The Ballymurphy massacre in West Belfast was perpetrated by the British Paratroop Regiment between 9 -11 August 1971, when Internment without trial was visited upon the Irish people in the North of Ireland.

600 British troops descended on the small community of Ballymurphy and over the course of three days, they shot dead ten civilians while another suffered a fatal heart attack.

The same regiment in Derry on Sunday 30 January 1972 murdered 14 civilians taking part in a peaceful civil rights march.

The Miami Showband killings occurred on 31 July 1975.

A group of musicians traveling home was stopped by a military checkpoint. The soldiers detained the band members while two members of the patrol attempted to plant a bomb on board the minibus under the driver's seat.

The bomb exploded prematurely killing two of the would-be assassins. The killers were actually members of a notorious murder squad known as the 'Glenane Gang' responsible for up to 120 deaths of mainly Catholics and nationalists.

The gang was made up of Police officers and UDR soldiers who were inextricably connected to British military intelligence operations.

When the bomb went off prematurely the decision was made to assassinate the band members.

The sole survivor Stephen Travers whom the gang thought they had murdered, was able to tell an investigation into this heinous crime, that the gang was led by a man with a strong military bearing and British accent.

He believed the bomb was designed to explode as the band continued its journey home.

The blame was to be placed on the band themselves or perhaps the Irish Republican Army.

Pat Finucane a civil rights lawyer was gunned down in front of his family while having their Sunday dinner on 12 February 1989.

Throughout the history of the ‘troubles’ from 1969-1998 persistent rumours of collusion between the state, its security forces, and loyalist terror gangs have surfaced on a regular basis.

Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister stood accused by the Nationalist/Republican community of “a shoot to kill” policy towards their members.

The indiscriminate use of plastic bullets and deaths caused by the army and police have been a constant source of bitter recrimination. State death squads are something more readily associated with Latin American dictatorships than a European democracy yet those accusations persist.

David Cameron in June 2010 in a prepared statement from the British House of Commons finally acknowledged that all those killed on 30 January 1972 were wholly innocent civilians. He made a formal apology on behalf of the government for the 'unjustified and unjustifiable killings' as reported in the Guardian newspaper.

Yet for decades the Official Inquiries found those murdered had been armed terrorists and nail bombers.

Only this year after 5 decades, did a Coroner's Court in Belfast in 2021, finally tell the world what the families and friends of those murdered in 1971 in Ballymurphy already knew.

They too were fully vindicated as being unarmed and not a threat to the British soldiers when they were killed. Calls have continued for a full and frank investigation into the murder of Pat Finucane. An inquiry has never been held.

We did not witness the actions of British soldiers running amok in Belfast, Derry, and Armagh.

We have seen the systematic use of force by the British state against its perceived enemies and the community from which they came.

While victims and families were hoping for closure and justice, the British government was proposing legislation that would effectively give the soldiers who committed war crimes against the Irish people, their officers, commanders, and political masters immunity from prosecution.

They were proposing that further investigations would not be mandated. No further inquests by the courts or prosecutions by the state would be forthcoming.

That journalistic investigations which may throw light upon some of these murders may become illegal?

The government is not just absolving the soldier's, police, military, and intelligence services of all its war crimes but the British government too.

This is unprecedented.

War crimes should have no moratorium. No statute of limitations. No amnesty for state murderers?

In 2013 Leigh Day acted on behalf of 5000 Kenyans who were subjected to torture, castration, rape, and brutality at the hands of the British Colonial administration.

The British government paid out 19.9 million pounds in compensation to its victims.

The British government wants to whitewash the history of its crimes in Ireland.

They have also proposed legislation that would prevent any further claims of compensation or prosecutions for those involved in British war crimes overseas to include Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the British Empire might have crumbled into dust and its only foreign aggression is at the behest of the United States, united in continuing to use military imperialism for resource theft in other sovereign nations, we should not, indeed we must not let these war crimes go unpunished.

We demand the truth. We demand justice. We demand accountability. We demand prosecutions.

No Justice No Peace!

𒍨The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al Mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Fra Hughes is a columnist with Al Mayadeen. 

Getting Away With Murder ➖ Britain To Protect Its War Criminals

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