It should come as no surprise then, to learn that the British may have had a role in the assassination of the revered Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020. It was reported that Akbari said a “British agent had asked for information about” Fakhrizadeh. This raises the question about whether MI6 was in some way involved in the assassination of Fakhrizadeh.
Initial reports had cast doubt on Iranian complaints about the use of hi tech weaponry in the assassination. Mossad took some trouble to make sure that the world knew that they had done the killing, by giving extensive briefings to the UK based Jewish Chronicle. The JC, as it is known, was recently taken over by hardline Zionists, with the new company solely owned by former Downing Street advisor Robbie Gibb, who has a history of involvement in covert intelligence activity. Extensive reporting on Mossad activities is a new departure for the paper. The briefings claimed along the way, that no other intelligence agency was involved though it was advanced that the CIA had some awareness. The confession of Akbari may put this in doubt.
The recruitment of spies and agents and their use in assassination plots is only a small part of the widespread tactics used by MI6 in countries around the world and especially in West Asia. MI6 also invests heavily in propaganda and the use of non-government organisations and companies as front groups as well as marshalling terrorist proxies against sovereign states.
Subverting Iran and Egypt in the 1950s
As is well known MI6 played a leading role in the coup which removed the Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953 - plotting the coup for years and for a time were unsuccessful in encouraging interest from the CIA.
The British conspired with Israel (and France) to invade Egypt in 1956, only to immediately accede to instructions from a surprised US to cease the operation, as declassified US files show. This was an indication that the power of British imperialism as an independent actor in the world was severely curtailed. But it did not stop the interventionist and propagandist role of MI6 in the more than sixty years since.
Demonizing Russia
Who in the world, outside those British citizens gullible enough to believe the word of the spooks, really thinks that the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with nerve agent (allegedly called “Novichok”) by Russian agents? Skripal had settled in sleepy Salisbury, just round the corner from his MI6 handler Pablo Miller, whose identity the Ministry of Defence went to some lengths to conceal. Salisbury is of course home to the British chemical and biological warfare establishment Porton Down, which has an illustrious history in moral dubiety. It was involved in poisoning the Scottish island of Gruinard with Anthrax in the 1940s, rendering it uninhabitable and in quarantine for 48 years until 1990. Porton Down scientists also tested over 1,500 subjects with nerve agents including almost 400 with Sarin in 1950s. This was done without the subjects informed consent, despite such consent being required in the UK from the 1930s and despite the promulgation of the Nuremburg Code developed as a result of Nazi atrocities including experimentation with nerve agents. Some died as a result and this was covered up for 50 years.
Recently the head of MI6, Richard Moore, has “revealed he still gets ‘angry’” over the alleged “Novichok” attack in Salisbury which, he said, “came close to causing ‘very significant casualties’. Denouncing the government of Vladimir Putin as “reckless”, Moore said, “If you imagine what would have happened if a kid had come across that material and spread it around.” But, of course, children did get near the Skripals. Local children were given bread by Sergei Skripal to feed the ducks in the park where the Skripals sat down and shortly thereafter collapsed. The children were taken to hospital for tests but were unharmed. In addition, a young girl – Abigail McCourt - later received an award for giving first aid to the Skripals in the same park. She seems to have suffered no ill effects. Presumably her mother – Alison McCourt, a British Army Colonel and Chief Nurse – who was on hand, was well aware of the danger of such close proximity to a “deadly nerve agent”.
The Syria playbook
Porton Down was also the place that chemical samples from Syria were taken to determine the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces in their attempts to beat off an armed insurrection from 2011. We have at least one scientist at Porton down to thank for puncturing the MI6 narrative and that particular ruse was discovered once the Sarin from the 2013 Ghouta attack was tested and found not to come from Syrian government stocks. Senior military brass famously conveyed this news to President Obama who quite properly decided that his famous “red line” had not been crossed and called off the planned bombing of Syria.
MI6 played a key role in this NATO proxy war, in marshalling the proxy forces, described as the “Free Syrian Army” and in Whitehall’s propaganda terminology the “Moderate Armed Opposition”. In particular the British appointed an MI6 officer to be the main contact with the so called MAO and spent millions contracting consultancy firms such as ARK, Incostrat, Albany Associates, Global Strategy Network, IN2 and many others, to provide news material burnishing their proxy forces and “independent media” to play up such fairy tales. They were also involved in the attempted fabrication of many chemical weapons events in Syria in the period including, via the involvement of a variety of NGO cut outs in Syria given the job of collecting (read fabricating) the evidence of chemical attacks such as through the various activities of self outed spook asset the former military officer Hamish de Bretton Gordon. Also involved was the British Foreign Office (the parent ministry of MI6) funded cut-out Mayday Rescue (better known as the White Helmets). It was involved in documenting at least three alleged incidents later examined by the OPCW, which involved civilian casualties: in Sarmin where six members of the Taleb family were killed (2015), in Khan Sheikhoun (2017) where some 70 civilians were victims, and at least 35 civilians killed in the alleged chemical attack in Douma (2018). In each of these incidents people dressed as White Helmets and endorsed by the leadership of that organization had a key role as purported first responders. In research produced with my colleagues in the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media we set out the evidence that these incidents were staged and that the victims were massacred captives. The clearest evidence that the White Helmets were actively involved in managing a massacre of civilians is from the Khan Sheikhoun incident on 4 April 2017, where:
a Syrian jet was alleged to have dropped a sarin-containing munition on the town causing the deaths of at least 70 people. The [OPCW] Joint Investigative Mechanism’s subsequent investigation of this incident reported that a flight map (presumably provided by the US military) “indicated that the closest to Khan Shaykhun that the [Syrian] aircraft had flown had been approximately 5 km away”, effectively ruling out an airstrike as the explanation for the incident. The only possible alternative is that the Khan Sheikhoun incident was organized on the ground, and this must have required the active involvement of the White Helmets. Although the White Helmets are famous for videoing their activities, there were no images of a search and rescue operation from the Khan Sheikhoun incident. The first images of the incident were recorded from about 7 am onwards, showing victims being hosed down by the White Helmets outside their base in a cave complex near the town. Later they were seen laid out in morgues in the town. Images of the children who were laid out in morgues showed that several had recent head injuries. In at least two cases by arranging images in temporal sequence and matching identities it was possible to establish that they had received these head injuries after the time they were purportedly rescued by the White Helmets.
The shocking involvement of MI6 in these war crimes is unfortunately not the first time that UK intelligence agencies had been involved in fabricating events as a pretext for western intervention, even in the case of Syria.
Destabilizing Syria in 1957
Official documents revealed in 2003 provide evidence of a joint CIA/MI6 "preferred plan" to destabilise Syria back in 1957. It even involved the creation of a “Free Syria committee”, a name eerily foretelling the “Free Syrian Army” created after 2011. The plan called for “a special effort” to “be made to eliminate certain key individuals”. Amongst the people targeted for assassination were the heads of Syrian military intelligence; chief of the Syrian general staff; and leader of the Syrian Communist Party.
"Once a political decision is reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria,” said the report “CIA is prepared, and SIS [MI6] will attempt, to mount minor sabotage and coup de main incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.” The report said that frontier incidents and border clashes would be staged to provide a pretext for military intervention. Syria had to be "made to appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments." The report says. "CIA and SIS should use their capabilities in both the psychological and action fields to augment tension." That meant "sabotage, national conspiracies and various strong-arm activities" to be blamed on Damascus.
The plan called for funding of a "Free Syria Committee", and the arming of "political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities" within Syria. The CIA and MI6 would instigate internal uprisings, for instance by the Druze in the south, … and stir up the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus. The conspirators envisaged creating an anti-Soviet regime, but they conceded that this would not be popular and "would probably need to rely first upon repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power".
With certain names changed, and no mention of chemical weapons, this could almost be the plan for the 2011 “uprising”. In the event, in 2011, proxy fighters from Wahabi factions were transported into Syria from training camps run by British and French intelligence agencies in Western Egypt – used in the previous operation against Libya’s Col. Gadaffi. Some 3,500 Libyans joined the NATO proxy war there.
Dismembering Libya
The British (and others) fostered the “calculated dismantling” of the Libyan regime which had “remained largely resistant to the opening up of its economy to Western investment” and, had “emerged as one of the strongest voices opposing the expansion of NATO and U.S. military power onto the African continent.” This followed extended penetration of the country by MI6 which recruited members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group a Wahabi, al-Qaeda linked group, paying and arming them to assassinate the Libyan leader Gadaffi. When this went wrong, the British government denied all knowledge, but nevertheless LIFG members were granted asylum in the UK many settling in Manchester. Later, under New Labour the policy changed and MI6 engaged in helping to render its former assets to the Libyan government, even going so far as to participate in their torture sessions as part of the post 9/11 War on Terror. By early 2011 Gadaffi was once more cast as an enemy, having failed to live up to his billing as a Western client, criticised NATO and taken steps to develop an African currency as an alternative to dollars or euros. Britain’s internal intelligence agency even facilitated Libyan exiles from Manchester to fight in Syria, clearing them to travel after the police raised questions and then “rescuing” them on the Royal Navy ship HMS Enterprise in August 2014. One of those thus enabled to participate in regime change in the sovereign nation of Libya was Salman Abedi who returned home and later (in 2017) committed the Manchester Arena bombing killing 22 civilians including seven children.
Trafficking agents to Syria
MI6 reportedly facilitated the arrival of foreign fighters in Syria including that of Errol Incedal, who allegedly infiltrated a “Jihadist group” on their behalf. He was subsequently accused of turning on his handlers which was why the secret state insisted on having his trial held in secret. In the case of three British schoolgirls (two of whom were 15 and one 16) who travelled to Syria reportedly “lured” by Da’esh, it subsequently emerged that they were smuggled over the border by an agent of a Canadian intelligence agency. British spies were reportedly told by “Canadian intelligence within 48 hours” that Shamima Begum had been smuggled over the Syrian border. Other reports suggest that MI6 were involved in the smuggling op and that the handler in the Canadian embassy in Amman, according to Turkish police “likely” to have been a British intelligence operative. It also appears that the agent on the ground was involved smuggling some 140 British citizens over the border to “join” Da’esh. Shamima Begum is still alive, but it’s believed that her two companions were killed in Syria. As Begum’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee put it “Intelligence-gathering looks to have been prioritised over the lives of children”.
Child abuse and British intelligence
We now know from the UK’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse that British domestic intelligence agency MI5 only created a child protection policy in 2014 and MI6 in 2015. The signals intelligence agency GCHQ appears still to have no such policy. The existing policies only appear to deal with what to do if it becomes known that a staff member or agent/asset is involved in sexual abuse of children as opposed to how intelligence gathering can put children at risk. So it appears to condone trafficking underage girls from London to territory held by terrorist groups in the presumed hope that valuable intelligence might be gleaned.
The stupidity and short sightedness of the people in charge of MI6 – up to and including the director - is truly extraordinary, even within the narrow terms of the idea of “British interests”. No wonder they try and pose as if they are in any way concerned about the protection of the lives of British children. There appears to be little in the world of deception and murder that the British intelligence agencies are unwilling to try. And there is little pushback in the UK to discourage them. Any moderately competent government in the UK would demand an immediate stop to MI6 lies and participation in terrorism and war crimes. Sadly the UK has little prospect of electing such a government any time soon.
2050
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