An interception of encrypted transmissions of the General Intelligence Presidency of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) by the British General Intelligence Directorate (GCHQ) is said to reveal that the order to assassinate Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist working for a number of Western media sources, came from the Saudi royal family. This claim was made by The Daily Express with a reference to its unnamed sources.
This publication has essentially revealed that British intelligence services, namely MI6, was well aware of the preparations made by the Saudi special services to silence a major nuisance for Saudi authorities, namely Jamal Hashoggi, forever. The absence of any visible or reported steps made by London to prevent this despicable crime serves as a direct indication that there was at least some form of involvement by British intelligence agencies in the assassination of the Saudi journalist.
However, this revelation could hardly surprise anyone even remotely familiar with the way British authorities support the Saudi regime, as London has been selling billions of dollars worth of arms to Riyadh. Those weapons are then used to fuel Saudi Arabia’s bloody aggression against Yemen, along with the continued onslaught of radical terrorism in Syria.
As we find new clues that London has been complicit with Saudi Arabia in this political assassination, it essentially means that the UK itself is also engaged in political terrorism.
Political assassinations are one of the dirtier ways of resolving political conflicts and happen to be pretty common in a handful of countries. When powerful people cannot or do not want to secure their goals by legal means, through agreements or democratic procedures, they essentially try to kill those standing in their way. However, Britain has always enjoyed a reputation as an unannounced champion of assassinations.
Just look at its track record. History books tell us that British agents tried to assassinate Napoleon by putting an extensive amount of explosives in a cart that detonated near the carriage carrying the legendary French emperor, but he managed to survive. Around the same time, the British ambassador too Moscow, Lord Charles Whitworth, engaged in a conspiracy designed to murder Russia’s emperor at the time – Paul I. Russian nobles from the liberal circles of the time were also involved in the conspiracy by spreading slanderous rumors about the Russian emperor. These tactics, by the way, are still very much alive and well today, as the UK spreads all kinds of propaganda about Russia.
Among more recent crimes, one remembers London admitting that it was British intelligence services that managed to succeed in yet another high-profile political assassination attempt — the murder of Grigory Rasputin in Petrograd back in 1916.
In recent decades, British intelligence agencies mounted one of the most widely-discussed assassinations of our time, aside from the Princess Diana case, the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Congo.
In 2010, it suddenly turned out that the key role in this crime was played by Baroness Daphne Park – the unproclaimed queen of British intelligence, who gave 30 years of her life to MI6. She revealed this just before her death. As a matter of fact there’s yet another aristocratic legend of British intelligence – Sir David Edward Lee, a member of the House of Lords who received many medals for his service. So, if such people are publicly honored by the British establishment, one can only assume it’s perceived as neither unacceptable nor immoral for London to revert to political terrorism.
However, what is particularly peculiar is that British authorities often try to push the blame for the crimes they’ve committed by unleashing propaganda aimed at innocent bystanders in a bid to whitewash the actions of the British intelligence community. We could witness this situation firsthand with the so-called Salisbury affair, as Sergey Skripal was pardoned by Russian officials before moving to London, meaning nobody in Russia had any interest in him back at home.
The peak of these kinds of clandestine operations carried out by MI6 occurred back in the 1970s. In 1976 the military dictator of Nigeria, General Murtala Mohammed was assassinated in his home country. In 1977, Uganda’s archbishop Janani Jakaliya Luwum was assassinated for his attempt to disobey the pro-Western leader of the country and the British ambassador. In that same year, year another pro-Soviet leader of the Congo, Marien Ngouabi lost his life to a killer at the age of 29, after living a life of military service. It should be especially noted that all of these assassinations were, at the time, shrugged off by British authorities who argued that African countries were savage and they could do nothing about this fact. But each time, revelations revealed to the world the true face of Britain, which had long been a serial political murderer.
A separate case study is Yemen, a nation plagued by coups and assassinations ever since its declaration of independence due to its crucial geographical location. To be more specific, back in 1977, a people’s man and a popular politician of the time, Colonel Ibrahim al-Hamdi was assassinated after his presidential election victory in North Yemen. A year later, the head of South Yemen and renowned hero of the struggle against British colonialists, Salim Rubai Ali was murdered as well. The driving force behind political assassinations and coups in Yemen were British elites, as they considered Yemeni lands to be extremely important for their designs, so the Yemeni independence movement became a major grievance for them.
The behavior of British intelligence in third world countries has always been savage, but in London this fact is regarded as a sign of valor rather than of criminality. Even the current era of political correctness does not change this fact, after all the character of James Bond, a man with a “license to kill” is a timeless hero throughout British pop-culture.
But political assassinations are not reserved for overseas for British political elites, as one can remember in 2010, when Labor MP Stephen Timms nearly lost his life in an assassination attempt.
Yet another Labor MP, Jo Cox, was assassinated in West Yorkshire. She was murdered in June of 2016 when she was leaving a local library after a meeting with party members. The killer shot at Cox in front of numerous witnesses and also stabbed her.
Of course, the British elites would never admit that they have been practicing political assassinations at the state level for decades. Spying and political assassinations have long been perceived in Britain as a sports of some cruel kind, which resulted in the offspring of famous and wealthy aristocratic families submitting their resumes to local intelligence agencies.
All of this is fundamentally different from the continental attitude toward such dubious activities. Spying and especially murdering people has never been considered in Europe as a decent occupation for an aristocrat, since it required cruelty and violence which didn’t go well with the noble spirit, or any sort of code of honor. But for British elites, that has always been a sort of diplomatic tradition – to kill people. And if some unwanted citizens happen to stand in the way of London, too bad for them.
That is why London has long been the capital of runaway criminals. If you committed a crime in your home country – go to London. The British justice system is built in such a way that a criminal from any country, excluding the US, can easily receive asylum. The UK Home Office managed to identify hundreds of war criminals safely residing across the UK. These people had previously applied to the Kingdom’s immigration services asking for permanent residence and received it. We are talking about former residents of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Serbia and a number of other countries.
So when one learns that Britain was in some way involved in yet another political assassination, one shouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.
Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”