Tag: terrorism

The final inquiry report, published on Thursday, has found that the Security Service, MI5, missed opportunities to stop suicide bomber Salman Abedi.  The head of MI5 has rightly apologised for his agency’s failings – a highly significant admission which might offer some solace to the bereaved families of the 22 victims. But there is a […]

Community organisers in Manchester say David Cameron’s aggressive foreign policy exposed a young generation of Libyans in Britain to extreme violence. And his austerity agenda – zealously implemented by Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary – left them without psychological support to treat their trauma. The warning comes amid Hunt’s return to frontline politics as Chancellor, […]

The father of the youngest person to be killed in the Manchester Arena attack believes the government and MI5 “have blood on their hands” for failing to prevent the suicide bombing. Salman Abedi, a British man of Libyan heritage, murdered 22 people at a pop concert in May 2017. The Islamic State terrorist group claimed […]

Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 a number of people – including then MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller – warned it would make the streets of Britain more dangerous. These warnings were ignored by Tony Blair. Even when MI5’s prophecy was proven tragically accurate with the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, Blair (who did […]

Part 4 of Declassified UK’s investigation into the Manchester Bombing The Manchester Arena inquiry, which was meant to investigate the radicalisation of the bomber Salman Abedi, is unlikely to get to the truth about his connections to the UK military and security services. The inquiry began taking evidence in September 2020 and closed its hearings […]

Part 3 of Declassified UK’s investigation into the Manchester bombing Britain’s military knew that fighters from an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist organisation were benefiting from the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011, but continued to support Nato airstrikes in Libya for another two months. The revelation raises serious questions about British foreign policy and whether the […]

Part 2 of Declassified UK’s investigation into the Manchester bombing Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, his father Ramadan and brothers Ismail and Hashem were  allowed to freely operate in the war zone of Libya for years before the 2017 atrocity. Evidence that emerged from the official inquiry into the Manchester Arena attack shows Salman Abedi was […]

Part 1 of Declassified UK’s investigation into the Manchester Bombing The Manchester bomber and his closest family were part of Islamist militia forces covertly supported by the British military and Nato in the Libyan war of 2011. The UK facilitated the flow of arms to Libyan rebel militias at the time, and helped train them, […]

Maz Saleem’s 82-year-old father Mohammed was fatally stabbed by Pavlo Lapshyn in 2013. Lapshyn, a white supremacist from Ukraine, went on to plant bombs outside three mosques in the Midlands before being arrested.  In a police interview, he said his motive was to “increase racial conflict”. The year after Lapshyn’s attack, fellow neo-Nazis in Ukraine […]

A damning report on police collusion with murders in Northern Ireland has just been published. Whitehall knew for decades that the UDA paramilitary group was carrying out wholesale murder – yet ministers long refused to ban it as a terrorist organisation and officials continued to meet its leaders.

A court has awarded £1.5 million in compensation to survivors of a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland that involved collusion between British soldiers and paramilitary forces. But those responsible for controlling the ‘Miami Showband’ killers have still not been held accountable.

The UK Foreign Office has spent around £24 million since 2013 assisting an armed police squad in Somalia whose counter-terrorism operations are shrouded in secrecy. Funding for Somalia’s Goodir Unit is intended to stop attacks by Al Shabab, the Al Qaeda-linked militant group in East Africa that claims to have recruited British Somalis from London, […]

Last week, British foreign secretary Dominic Raab made his first trip to Pakistan after the botched withdrawal of troops and civilians from neighbouring Afghanistan in August. Raab described Pakistan as a “vital partner” as he sought with his Pakistani counterpart to “prevent Afghanistan becoming a hub for terrorist groups.” Yet known to the British Foreign […]

A controversial Whitehall body — the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund — has used large amounts of money from the British aid budget to support the opposition in Syria. Declassified outlines the extent of this funding for the first time.

Britain’s Royal Air Force is about to establish a second fighter squadron with Qatar, an authoritarian Gulf state accused of supporting extremist groups across the Middle East which the UK itself opposes and says promote terrorism.

On the centenary of Ireland’s partition, Northern Ireland is changing. But the lessons from its recent violent ‘dirty war’, in which British agents colluded in killings, risk being ignored by the current British government.

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.

A multimillion-pound police probe into murders allegedly committed by a British army agent inside the IRA in Northern Ireland is reluctant to question senior UK commanders in charge of the covert mission, a retired intelligence officer has told Declassified.

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.

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.

Newly-discovered documents show how UK covert operations in Syria helped ‘shape perceptions’ of the war. The British government effectively ran Syrian opposition groups’ media offices and created publicity material aimed at Syrian and UK audiences, challenging the idea the UK has played a small role in the conflict.

Various sources — including declassified government files and official police and parliamentary reports on both sides of the border in Ireland — suggest that collusion between British security forces and loyalist paramilitary groups was systematic and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people. The so-called “Troubles” in Northern Ireland began in the late 1960s. […]