There is no way Assad would use chemical weapons – David Shayler
Photo: EPA
The war on whistleblowers and the illegality that they have exposed as well as the pretext to war in Syria were discussed with the Voice of Russia’s John Robles by Former MI5 officer David Shayler, the whistleblower who exposed the organization of an assassination plot on Muammar Gaddafi by MI6. Mr. Shayler discussed the situation in Syria as well and gave his opinion on the current Syrian crisis.
Hello! This is John Robles, I’m speaking with David Shayler, a former MI5 officer who’s turned truth campaigner.
Robles: I’m very well as well, and it’s a pleasure to be speaking with you. Can you tell our listeners a little bit briefly about your history and what happened with you in MI5? And then, I’d like to ask you about Gaddafi a little bit.
Shayler: Sixteen years ago I blew the whistle. I’d been an MI5 officer and I was workingthe Libyan desk, and MI6 had briefed me about an operation in which they had a source in Libyan military intelligence who they were funding to carry out a coup, which would involve the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi.
The People that MI6 were paying, would then seize power and they would hand over the two Lockerbie suspects. But unfortunately, this Libyan military intelligence officer was really a group of Islamic extremists, basically.
So even though this was 1996, the intelligence services had sort of highlighted Islamic terrorism as the new threat. So we were paying money, the British Government, to the enemies of the British people to bump off someone who was no longer an enemy – Colonel Gaddafi. So the whole thing didn’t make any sense, and innocent people died and that’s why I blew the whistle.
Shayler: That’s right, yeah! I mean, I’ve been put in prison twice. But more seriously than that, I’ve had countless attempts on my life. I’ve been in four very peculiar car accidents, any of which I could have been killed in, or maimed, and I walked out without a scratch each time.
One particular of interest was when I was heading to see Mohamed al-Fayed’s security people two months after the death of Princess Diana, and the driver, who had been sent down by Mohamed al-Fayed, fell asleep at the wheel and he hit thecentral reservation of the motorway.
Fortunately, because he hit the central reservation he woke up, and grabbed the car, and it got back under control a bit. But of course in the Diana death there was carbon monoxide, elevated levels of carbon monoxide in Henri Paul’s blood, he was driving the car that Diana died in.
So, I am inclined to think that because we were heading up to see Mohamed al-Fayed’s head of security to talk about the Diana death, that was an attempt on my life. And I’ve had many, many other situations like that. Obviously, that doesn’t stop me, but that shows the extent they’ll go to to shut up the critics who are really getting under their skin.
Robles: I see. There is so much I’d like to speak with you about. Maybe we could get your opinion, your views, on other whistleblowers. I’m sure Edward Snowden you know about, Bradley Manning. What’s your opinion, as a whistleblower yourself who’s suffered?
Shayler: It’s appalling, isn’t it? Because these people actually, essentially blow the whistle about the crimes of the states they were working for. It’s like me, you know, I wasn’t just speaking out about intelligence operations because I felt like it, I was actually describing very serious crimes in which people were murdered and in which our terrorist enemies were funded by people who are supposed to be protecting us.
Now, it’s exactly the same thing with Bradley Manning. He’s released, as far as I can gather data from the WikiLeaks stuff, is he’s released stuff of the US forces in places like Afghanistan and Iraq just gunning down civilians. That’s a war crime; this man is a witness to crimes, he shouldn’t be going to prison.
The same with Edward Snowden as well, honestly, when I first saw him giving an interview in a hotel room, obviously my mind flashed back to 16 years ago when I was doing exactly the same thing.
You know, and I hope he’s learnt, he has learnt in fact, learnt his lessons from my experience, because I didn’t take the documents. I took documents and I left them in the safe-keeping of the newspaper to hand them back to the authorities, because I actually believed the authorities would give me a fair hearing, which shows in a parallel sense how naïve and stupid I was, really. But of course, Ed Snowden hasn’t done that, he’s got his documents off to WikiLeaks or whatever, and he can use those as a bargaining chip, and we can then really see what America has really been up to, basically.
But these people are heroes. There is no way these people are criminals at all. You know, I say everybody who brands them as a criminal, you know people in the US and people in the UK. If you’d lost your children in attacks carried out by a foreign army, you’d want to know about it, you wouldn’t be saying to the guy who has just blown the whistle “he’s a criminal”, you’d be going in and saying “thank you”. And because I’ve had that in my situation, because I actually gave evidence to the “Bloody Sunday Inquiry”.
You probably don’t know, many years ago, 40 years ago, 30 unarmed Catholics were gunned down in Londonderry, in a civil rights march, and for many years they had an inquiry in which the British Government said “Oh yeah, the IRA have caused this and everything else”.
But gradually, over the years the families campaigned, and they realized that that evidence wasn’t the case, the IRA hadn’t started it, there was no evidence of that. But then what did the British authorities do? They tried to blame Martin McGuinness for firing the shot that started Bloody Sunday.
Fortunately, now I was out of the service, when I saw the agents that they were using to back this up, with the agent report, I knew the agent was what is called a bullshitter, basically. And I gave the evidence to the inquiry, and when I came out members of the families was coming up to me saying that they were just so glad that somebody with the authority had actually stood up for the truth and actually bothered to tell the truth, rather than the kind of officialdom they had come up against for years and years and years.
And let’s face it. This is a form of psychological torture, it really is, to be telling the truth,to have lost loved ones, and have a monolithic state telling you the people that you lost were “terrorists” and you should go away and shut up!
The people we are opposing are psychopaths. They are absolute psychopaths! In each case I say to them “where are the principles of things you would be done by, (unintelligible). In those circumstances you would want the truth, so why do you deny that truth to other people?”
Robles: Do you know anything about what was going on in Syria? Can you comment on these chemical weapons claims? I mean, there are a lot of discrepancies in what the US is trying to push. And I know, I think and you know, they want to invade Syria. And it seems to me, they are trying to fabricate a pretext to go in there. What do you think about that?
Shayler: Yes, absolutely! This is a total pretext. When you study these world things, you realize that these people are made out to be madmen, like Gaddafi and Saddam, and Assad, and so on, are not actually madmen at all. And they often are much better in their behavior because they know the West is watching.
In the recent years, I can tell you, there are two countries went abroad andkilled two million people, from other countries, used things like phosphorus and used depleted uranium, i.e. chemical weapons which are banned, who’ve used cluster bombs – and that’s the UK and the US. They are your two terrorist organizations in the world who’ve got a record for using chemical warfare.
There is no way in a situation we have with Assad at the moment in Syria, that he’d want to use chemical weapons because he is actually beating the rebels. He knows the US and the UK are spending a fortune on backing these rebels, and they’re getting nowhere basically. So, he wouldn’t use chemical weapons now. The Russians are saying they have no evidence of chemical weapon use here.
And we know, in the past going to wars they’ve used any kind of stuff they can as propaganda. Remember in 1991, when we had this girl who came on and addressed the US Congress and said “Oh yes, Iraqi soldiers have been taking babies out of incubators and killing them”, and all this kind of thing. And it turned out that she was somebody of the opposition or something, and it all just turned out to be setup.
So, I cannot believe that we have politicians who are perceiving this seriously at the moment. People like William Hague, he should be on trial for war crimes, I mean, hanging really is too good for him.
John RoblesRead more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_08_28/There-is-no-way-Assad-would-use-chemical-weapons-David-Shayler-5394/
China urges restraint over Syria tensions, calls for calm
Syria
Photo: RIA Novosti
China's foreign minister urged restraint on Thursday in the growing tensions over Syria, saying any military intervention in the crisis would only worsen turmoil in the Middle East.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said military action would not help, but also repeated that Chinaopposed anyone using chemical weapons.
"A political resolution has, from the very beginning, been the only way out for the Syrian issue," Wang said in a statement on the ministry's website.
There should be no rush to prejudge the findings of a UN team currently in Syria to investigate the claims chemical weapons were used. "China calls on all sides to exercise restraint and remain calm," Wang said.
UN inspectors need 'four days' in Syria - Ban Ki-moon
Photo: EPA
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that UN inspectors needed four days in total to conclude a probe into chemical weapons use in Syria.
"My mandate and my responsibility at this time is to conduct a thorough and complete investigation," Ban told reporters in The Hague.
"Let them (inspectors) conclude their work for four days," he said, speaking at the centenary anniversary of the Peace Palace, seat of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations' highest court.
The UN chief added that the team's findings would then be analysed and the result sent to the UN Security Council for "any action they would deem to take".
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said later that Ban was referring to a total of four days. This suggests that the inspectors, who began their probe of the alleged chemical weapons site on Monday but whose work was suspended on Tuesday, needed at least until Friday to complete their work.
Ban's comments came as the United States and its allies were building their case for military action against the Syrian regime over the alleged chemical weapons attacks, despite stern warnings from Russia.
The UN chief earlier called on a divided Security Council to unite and find a diplomatic solution to the escalating Syrian conflict.
"Syria is the biggest challenge of war and peace in the world today. The body entrusted with maintaining international peace and security cannot be missing in action," Ban said, referring to the Security Council.
"To those providing weapons to either side, we must ask: what have those arms achieved but more bloodshed?
"The military logic has given us a country on the verge of total destruction, a region in chaos and a global threat. Why add more fuel to the fire?"
Ban said however that all perpetrators of chemical attacks would be brought to justice, but that the facts had to established first.
The UN inspectors have "collected valuable samples" and have conducted interviews with victims and witnesses since arriving in the strive-torn country.
The UN-Arab League special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said Wednesday it was clear a chemical substance had been used in an August 21 attack in the war-torn country, killing hundreds of people.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva about the suspected chemical attack, Brahimi said "it does seem some kind of substance was used that killed a lot of people. Hundreds. Definitely more than 100, some people say 300, some people say 600, maybe 1,000, maybe more than 1,000 people."
Lakhdar Brahimi added that any US military action taken in response to apprent chemical weapons attacks in Syria would need to be approved by the UN Security Council.
"I think international law is clear on this. International law says that military action must be taken after a decision by the Security Council. That is what international law says," he told a press conference in Geneva.
"I must say that I do know that President Obama and the American administration are not known to be trigger-happy. What they will decide I don't know. But certainly internationl law is very clear."
His comments came as the United States and its allies were building their case for likely military action against the regime in war-torn Syria over alleged chemical weapons attacks.
Testimony from victims strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin nerve gas during a recent incident in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior UN diplomat said Monday.
Carla del Ponte, a member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof," that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.
But she said her panel had not yet seen any evidence of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons, according to the BBC, but she added that more investigation was needed.
Voice of Russia, AFP, BBC, Reuters
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_08_28/UN-inspectors-need-four-days-in-Syria-Ban-Ki-moon-7544/
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_08_28/UN-inspectors-need-four-days-in-Syria-Ban-Ki-moon-7544/
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