Tag: MI6

Britain’s flagship petroleum corporation BP pumped more than 5.5 billion barrels of Russian oil during the rule of Vladimir Putin, after his regime approved BP’s purchase of a host of lucrative assets, Declassified has found.  The oil was pumped between 2002-20 and was worth in excess of £271 billion based on average prices during the […]

Two days after the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001, I wrote in the Guardian: “Not long ago, I bumped into a very senior British military officer at a conference in Europe on international security. The more the US demonised Osama bin Laden, he said, the more support he will attract in the Arab […]

When Osama Bin Laden fled Afghanistan after 9/11, an old friend helped him escape the US manhunt. Yunus Khales, the veteran commander of Afghan mujahideen group Hezbi Islami (Islamic Party), had long supported Al Qaeda’s leader.  In 1996, when Bin Laden was expelled from Sudan, it was Khales who welcomed him to Afghanistan, giving him […]

In 1980, journalist John Fullerton sat down for lunch in London with members of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6. The spooks asked the restless reporter to name five cities where he would like to work. He scrawled the answers unhesitatingly on a paper napkin. “The top one was Peshawar in Pakistan,” […]

During her career, Cressida Dick, Britain’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has repeatedly escaped full accountability over her role in controversial cases. One murky episode is her time in the ‘Foreign Office’, understood to really mean MI6.

The new head of MI6 says his agency will monitor other countries’ climate commitments, but the UK’s intelligence agencies are refusing to provide any information on their own environmental footprint.

The public inquiry into the 2017 Manchester terrorist attack shows no sign of investigating the UK’s covert role in the Libya war of 2011 — in which the Manchester bomber had fought. He is one of four terrorists from that conflict who went on to slaughter 63 people, mainly Britons, in separate attacks — and they may even have received military training from UK-allied forces.

Some of the most senior figures in the British establishment have secretly served as ‘privy councillors’ to a highly repressive dictatorship in the Gulf state of Oman. The elite UK group has included heads of MI6 and the military, a foreign minister, an oil executive, the ex-governor of the Bank of England and one of Queen Elizabeth’s closest aides.

Britain’s Foreign Office knew Kenya’s Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) was involved in renditions of terror suspects yet paid for its new headquarters and continues assistance programmes, along with London’s Metropolitan Police, disclosures obtained by Declassified UK show.

The official inquiry into the 2017 Manchester bombing has yet to probe the links between the terrorist, Salman Abedi, and UK covert action during the 2011 war in Libya – yet there is no point in the inquiry unless it asks difficult questions the British establishment would rather avoid.

After Declassified UK’s revelation that Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), known as MI6, ‘misled’ two inquiries into the arrest of a suspected British terrorist in Kenya, Richard Norton-Taylor outlines the long history of MI6 operating outside of democratic control.

Three intelligence officers tell Declassified UK that Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, tracked and arranged the arrest of Michael Adebolajo in Kenya, contradicting MI6’s testimony to two intelligence oversight reviews.

The need for proper scrutiny of the UK’s security and intelligence agencies, such as MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the military’s special forces, is becoming increasingly urgent. A number of practical measures would make these agencies more transparent and accountable to the public.

A covert Kenyan paramilitary team armed and trained by the US and supported by UK intelligence is behind renditions and controversial killings of terror suspects in night-time raids, Declassified UK can reveal. 

Britain’s intelligence agencies are teaching the next generation of spymasters from some of the world’s most repressive dictatorships, it can be revealed for the first time.

There is money and power in identifying Russia and cyber attacks as the key security threats facing Britain — but not in addressing the more important issues of pandemics and climate change. Former UK intelligence chiefs are personally profiting from the ‘revolving door’ between government and business, and the public is paying the price.

The risk of a global pandemic that could kill hundreds of thousands of British people has been raised by UK policy-making officials for more than 15 years without the UK’s security and intelligence agencies prioritising the threat, new analysis shows.

Their role, and desperate attempts at denial, notably in seizing two Libyan dissidents and handing them over to the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police, is one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of Britain’s foreign adventures. And it is far from reaching a conclusion. British ministers continue to break a promise […]

British foreign secretary Dominic Raab recently described the “rule of international law” as one of the “guiding lights” of UK foreign policy. By contrast, the government regularly chides states it opposes, such as Russia or Iran, as violators of international law. These governments are often consequently termed “rogue states” in the mainstream media, the supposed […]

The stories — which quote former or current members of the army, navy and special forces, as well as MI5, MI6 and an ex-senior civil servant — have averaged one every six weeks since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in September 2015. There have, however, been significant spikes in frequency during […]