Craig Murray: The Guardian - Disgraceful Neocon Rag

Operation Flavius and the Killer Cameron 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? SOURCE https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/09/operation-flavius-and-the-killer-cameron/ ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT LOL ... I love the remark about The Guardian being a "disgraceful neocon rag". I knew I'd like Craig Murray. ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- Wasn't intending to post anything other the comment re The Guardian, but this is also very interesting. This extra-judicial killing of targets overseas sort of 'complements' the criminal law turned to 'global law' strategy used by the British, as an excuse for the secret drone attacks in Syria (that was mentioned elsewhere). Who is permitted to go overseas to kill depends on who is being killed, perhaps? LOL  ... Saudis and CIA arming al-Qaeda, who then joined ISIS.  Oh, wait a minute ... They're supposed to be funding ISIS, too.  Think they all might answer to CIA and friends. 'Authorities' that fund terrorists can hardly point the finger at other organisations, declaring them 'terrorists.'   I think it really is the law of jungle and it's only a matter of:  might is right and 'do whatever' ... as Mr Crowley, kind of said. Assange Transnational Security Elite, Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money London  OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011) Link  |  here ꕤ