Exactly twenty years ago the European Court of Human Rights found that the British Government had acted illegally in shooting dead three IRA members in Gibraltar, even though the court accepted that the government had a genuine belief that they were planning a bombing attack. Indeed the court accepted the victims were terrorists, and refused compensation to their families on those grounds. But the court refused to accept there was no possibility of foiling the plot through methods other than summary execution.
In the light of the decision that Operation Flavius contravened Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, it is difficult to understand how the government can claim its killing of British men in Syria, with no trial, is anything other than murder. I personally find it difficult to imagine technically how men journeying in a car in Syria were imminently able to instantly wreak havoc in the UK so that it was impossible to prevent by any method other than their execution without trial. The level of certainty required for that decision would involve sufficient knowledge of what was to happen in the UK to stop it here. If there was vagueness about what was actually to happen in the UK, there cannot have been the certainty about the threat claimed. It is a logical impasse.
Frankly in twenty years of experience working with British security services their level of accuracy (remember Iraqi WMD) was never that good. And everybody is fortunately now deeply sceptical about the continual claims by the security services that there are thousands of dedicated Islamic terrorists in the UK conducting hundreds of plots every year, and yet miraculously never actually managing to kill anybody.
Just in case anybody had not worked out yet that the Guardian is a disgraceful neo-con rag, it has an article by its “legal correspondent” Joshua Rozenberg, married to the even more rabid Zionist militarist Melanie Phillips (who still believes the Iraqi WMD exist, hidden in the bed of the Euphrates). Rozenberg assures us it is absolutely legal for the British government to kill us without trial if it wants. He even suggests the murdered Mr Khan would not object:
“If he was waging war on British troops and civilians, he can hardly complain the UK’s armed forces were one step ahead of him.”
Astonishingly for a lawyer, the disgraceful Rozenberg does not seem to notice that the opening “if” is rather important. “If Mr Jones was engaged in insurance fraud, he can hardly complain at being banged up for twenty years”, so according to Mr Rozenberg we can dispense with all that nonsense about trials and evidence and just take the government’s word for it. Not to mention that the government has now instituted summary execution without trial in a country that does not even have the death penalty.
As I have argued, it is not unusual for British people to go to fight abroad. There were British citizens in the Israeli Defence Forces participating in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza last year. Our neo-con governments of both blue and red Tories have positively encouraged the mercenary companies Executive Outcomes/Sandline/Aegis of Tony Buckingham and Tim Spicer. There are Britons fighting now in the Ukraine. We started by positively encouraging factions in the Syrian civil war, with the Saudis and CIA arming and training them and some of those factions helped constitute ISIL. There is no evidence at all that Islamic State had any interest in attacks in the UK until we started to attack it. (That is not to say it is not a very bad organisation and did not commit actions against UK citizens in its “Caliphate area”. But it did not threaten the UK).
For the government to claim the right to kill British people through sci-fi execution, based on highly unreliable secret intelligence and a secret declaration of legality, is so shocking I find it difficult to believe it is happening even as I type the words. Are we so cowed as to accept this?
http://mrwatchlist.com/category/terrorist-asset-freezing-etc-act-2010-tafa-updates/
The common thread running through the apologies for Cameron`s boasts is an acceptance of the propaganda narrative conveyed by the media.
Nothing in the way of proof is given to excuse the killings.
No doubt this is the way the Establishment feels it appropriate to mark the Magna Carta anniversary.
Words, they are reminding us, are cheap, deeds like these tell the real story.
The logical conclusion is that the targets of this assassination-in Syria through the good offices of our NATO ally Turkey, fighting on the side supported by the British government, the side which uses Israeli field hospitals to treat its wounded, using arms supplied by the United States and being paid by our Gulf allies, including Saudi Arabia, learned, from experience, that they were on the wrong side of a conflict in which they discovered themselves to be allies of the Zionists and Imperialists.
Horrified, these two young men were making a run for it, attempting to join the righteous party or return home to tell the truth.
And that will have been why they had to be killed.
AS to Cameron and his fanclub wanting to fight ISIS all that they need to do, if they are really interested, is to take up positions on the Turkish border where truckloads of fighters, weapons and supplies, under government escort, pass over into Syria every day. And have been doing so for years. As the government, the media and everyone but the trusting old couple on the Clapham omnibus, is very well aware.
Back in May
http://overridden54.rssing.com/chan-23932566/all_p11.html
—–
[ Mod: Caught in spam-filter ]
Part of the difficulty is the extent to an extra judicial killing may open up arguments to those countries, who assassinate their own here in the UK for eg Russians and former Bulgarian regime etc. Instead of denying that they had anything do with it they might just as well admit and say that it was for reasons of national security etc. That would be a sorry state of affairs. Is our Drone just a modern Bulgarian umbrella?
Syria is a civil war, but its not a war in which we are a party (well not officially so as far as I am know although what do I know; these days we just seem to slip in to war). What is the difference between a state assassination of a Brit in Syria and say in France or the US.
Another difficulty is that something unacceptable is becoming a norm. It shouldn’t be. I am not saying that it is never acceptable for a state to carry out an extra judicial assassination, but it should be so far from the norm that it should be shrouded in secrecy and obscurity and should be a real thorn in the conscience of those few, very unfortunate few, who have to make such unpleasant decisions. It should never be a norm. It should be so unacceptable that it is hidden not boasted about.
Craig has had an inside track and may have some experience of those things which must be denied and I am not asking or encouraging him to tell us about such matters (I sometimes think he goes too far although I like and value his books), but I take it from Craig’s outrage that he believes these things to be rare. Extra judicial killing must be thought of and believed to be inherently undesirable and only for the very last resort. If they become commonplace then we have lose our thin veneer of civilisation.
Someone said that hypocrisy is a positive because you only have hypocrisy where you have values. Where you have no values you don’t need hypocrisy. Maybe we need to be lying hypocrites. “Lawful” open drone extra judicial killing suggests that we are losing our values.
The army and security services need priests and poets not lawyers and PR teams.
Its just not good form to kill and boast, just as its not good form to carry out a coup and boast. Some subtlety is required.
After WWII most MPs knew about death first hand, but today they are insulated. Drone warfare insulates them further and the army, the RAF and everyone. Yes, if one has to kill reduce the risk to one’s own side, but don’t use that reduced risk to increase your blood lust. If MPs sanction this sort of thing then THEY the MPs should spend time in national service and on front line service.
RobG
“Anon1, I presume you’ll be one of the first to sign-up for active service in Syria.”
_________________
Have you volonteered to give temporary accomodation in your 5 bedroom house in Poitou-Charentes for any of the Syrian refugees which will be going to France?
Just listened to a young Aberdeen man on Radio 4’s PM. He was a boyhood friend of Rakeeb Amin. He’d heard on the news that Rakeem had been killed on another, earlier occasion, and called him on his mobile, only to find him still alive….. The meeeja!!
Fwister
That was a sensible and above all thoughtful post. Thank you.
No it just reflects the holy warriors fighting their keyboard war! The echo chamber is no more than that. Try talking to people on the metro and on the buses and you will be amazed at their take on the situation. You can fool some of the people some of the time, you can’t ……….
============
His CIA handler was a dentist in Cairo, and his hatred of all things communist pretty much qualified him for the operation paper clip lot who had moved from various German intelligence organs back to Washington DC.
Lysias you seem to be an exception to the rule, betwixt your compatriots. How come?
===================
But why use all those fancy stuff, when the command and control is elsewhere and fully cognisant of the movements and whereabouts of the designated target?
Cheers… I will try to be more foolish in future.
The same technique was used when Gilligan met David Kelly (24th May) and broadcast his report on the 29th. It took Campbell and Blair over a month to get excited about it but when they did the press were at their beck and call.
TJ
08/09/2015 5:04pm
“Can we not imagine a situation where British jihadis in Syria are encouraging and facilitating attacks in the UK without leaving Syria, and if so would this not constitute solid evidence for the threat such individuals posed, without necessarily providing enough information on the attack itself and the people involved to reliably thwart it?”
TJ
08/09/2015 6:14pm
“Craig’s point was that the situation as outlined by Cameron was logically impossible. If we can in fact imagine that situation – even if it is far-fetched, which I happily grant – then it is not logically impossible and Craig was incorrect.”
Craig Murray
08/09/2015 8:40am
“I personally find it difficult to imagine technically how men journeying in a car in Syria were imminently able to instantly wreak havoc in the UK so that it was impossible to prevent by any method other than their execution without trial. The level of certainty required for that decision would involve sufficient knowledge of what was to happen in the UK to stop it here. If there was vagueness about what was actually to happen in the UK, there cannot have been the certainty about the threat claimed. It is a logical impasse.”
I’m not a lawyer, TJ, so I am open to correction on this matter, but my understanding is this.
Cameron says the legal basis for these killings is the inherent right to self-defence possessed by states under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This right to self-defence is activated under conditions of an armed attack against a member nation.
My understanding is that this armed attack must be actual (ongoing at the moment) or imminent (about to happen; also it needs to be objectively verifiable). That might seem a rather absurdly strict criterion, but I understand that to be the accepted law.
Craig’s point, I believe, is that if an armed attack on the UK is imminent, how can the execution of people in Syria prevent it, or be the only way to prevent it? Only if you know that someone in Syria is literally the only person who can say yea or nay to the beginning of the attack and if they are executed then the attack will not take place, could you argue that executing someone in Syria is a defence against imminent armed attack in the UK.
I leave you to ponder whether that is good enough to say whether the situation is logically impossible.
Kind regards,
John
Craig, I agree. Fwister at 7:09pm – brilliant post. Hit the nail on the head. It is utterly shocking to me that this simply was done and presented on a plate.
General Q’assam’s regime can fairly be described as rather typical for the Arab world – dictatorial, corrupt, using torture and murder of the state’s own citizens as a matter of state policy….and the fate awaiting the good General was no less typical. The people of Irak have been unfortunates for a long, long time. The people of Israel, on the other hand have been fortunate – no General Q’assams, not Nuri as-Sa’ids, no Nassers, no Mubaraks, no family firms named Assad. That’s democracy!
@6.00 pm Try this.
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin took place on November 4, 1995 (12th of Marcheshvan, 5756 on the Hebrew calendar) at 21:30, at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv. The assassin, an Israeli ultranationalist terrorist named Yigal Amir, strenuously opposed Rabin’s peace initiative and particularly the signing of the Oslo Accords.
/..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin
“Yes, if one has to kill reduce the risk to one’s own side”
Isn’t it always, in reality, a perpetuation of a cycle of violence.
I also reject the state is on my side, the civilians in any country are more my allies.
In reality these are all hypothetical scenarios that are insignificant to real life events, where there are always tons of other options.
And the whole “nation” “sides” meme is a creation with generally evil consequences for most.
Habbabkuk (la vita e’ bella)
8 Sep, 2015 – 7:25 pm
The internal treatment of citizens (some much better than other in Israels case) has no bearing on how that state is abroad.
Germany treated it’s citizens (apart from some) very well…
Charles Crawford retweeted
Joshua Rozenberg @JoshuaRozenberg · 24 hours ago
Was it lawful for UK forces to kill British Isis fighters in Syria? More than 330 comments so far on my analysis: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/07/lawful-uk-forces-british-isis-fighters-syria
Assume that, by retweeting it, he agrees with Rozenberg?
The exchange on Rozenberg’s twitter.
https://twitter.com/JoshuaRozenberg/status/640960497999835136
“My only hope is that this isn’t just some stunt by the PR man, Cameron. It needs to be followed through with repeated strikes on Islamic State targets followed by a major offensive to rid the region of this scourge on humanity. We are dealing with the most barbaric savagery imaginable. It must be wiped out.” Anon1
Perhaps a more effective way of achieving this end would be to freeze the assets of Saudi Arabia/UAE/Kuwait and Qatar and threaten to do the same with Turkey. And maybe if we stopped destroying countries which stand in opposition to the aforementioned cabal. And if we stopped covertly supporting Jihadists ourselves.
Giyane’s point from a few days ago was correct, I suspect. This strike is an excuse to attack and destroy the rest of Syria. As with Turkey, we will pretend to be attacking ISIS when actually we will be destroying what is left of the infrastructure of Syria – we are really, really at doing that, aren’t we – and taking out the Syrian Government/Army/state structures for ever and ever, Amen. Most of the Syrian population now is cowering in Government-held areas. They are running away,, not from the Government but from the so-called rebels – our great allies in ISIS, Al Nusra and all the other fanatical mass murderers. The regime was (to paraphrase Habbabkuk) a ‘typical Arab regime’, and as one would expect, it too has committed atrocities over the years and during this war too, but it was far, far better than this.
Typo: … really, really good at doing that…
@Habbabkuk (la vita e’ bella)
8 Sep, 2015 – 7:10 pm
Habba, we rent out the main part of the house (4 bedrooms) and it forms a substantial part of our income. Without that income we’d probably be refugees as well.
According to Channel 4 News, there were 3 people in the car that was hit by the drone missile – two Brits and one unidentified. Who was the third victim? A taxi driver? A child? Unless Cameron can prove this third person was a terrorist threat to the UK, he should be charged with murder.
Coming back to David kelly and the manipulation of the press (ergo fooling the public).
The police were aware that Kelly was dead before his body was found, the head of news was informed that it was suicide and painkillers and a knife were involved; this was whilst the ambulance crew were being detained at the scene by police and refused permission to use their radio to contact their HQ because of a “news black out”.
The head of news at the BBC knew several hours before the pathologist reached the scene, and discovered blister packs of pills in Kelly’s pockets, that painkillers were involved. According to police no one touched the body until the pathologist and forensic team arrived.
Also before the pathologist had reached the scene journalists in the US had been informed of the cause of death, suicide.
So I am afraid that the newspapers can be trusted just about as much as the British intelligence services.
I think that we soon are likely to see drone attacks within the UK. It will be on ‘people plotting to do this or that’, ‘people with smoking bombs in their hands’ and so on. I think there is already drone surveillance – ‘flying cctv’ – and this will be weaponised. All it would take to ‘justify’ this is one bad terrorist outrage. No doubt some groomed idiot will oblige.
“So I am afraid that the newspapers can be trusted just about as much as the British intelligence services.” Peter Beswick, at 7:51pm.
Which neatly dovetails back to my point, made yesterday, about journalists/editors on the MI5/6 payroll or at least reliable agents of influence.
“1 explain “warzone” ….We are not at war in any substantive way. ”
A war zone is an area which the International Red Cross has designated a war zone. When that happens the people in it should comply with the Geneva Convention regarding protecting civilians, treatment of prisoners etc.. The Red Cross designated Syria a “non-international armed conflict” in 2012 so it is a designated war zone.
I am convinced there will be a “terrorist” attack planned in the UK in the near future but do not expect the newspapers to report the truth.
Destroying countries is good. Yee-haw. And it pays very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6QHZs1dDuI
Mark Golding
8 Sep, 2015 – 12:44 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=143&v=IpBGfmIMfr0
Thank-you for watching.
______________
Mark/(al)
Many thanks for that. Quite effective! I want to ask, is Save the Children a good place to send money for children in Syria? What about CARE? Any other suggestions, please?
Thanks and again and stay well!
“Cheers… I will try to be more foolish in future…”
Comity can be good in certain circumstances. In this case it’s enabling. More people need to recognize this.
Node, “Unless Cameron can prove this third person was a terrorist threat to the UK, he should be charged with murder.”
Agree + prove the others where an imminent threat. Useful assassinations aren’t they, dead don’t talk. And it’s all strictly classified no doubt.