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by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 8 November 2022 The UK armed the Shah’s “autocracy” and directly aided his brutal security service in the decades leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, declassified files show. “Iran is an autocracy and all power flows from the Shah”, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) wrote in an internal […]

Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 5 October 2022 The UK’s current war in Yemen is not the first time Britain has contributed to devastating the country. Sixty years ago, a coup in North Yemen prompted UK officials to begin a secret war that also led to tens of thousands of deaths – and, as now, no […]

by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 27 September 2022 UK participation in the Ukraine conflict is far-reaching, involving military and intelligence support, arms supplies and information warfare. But as Ukraine makes gains on the battlefield, Whitehall sees the war not only as a way to defend Kyiv but to ensure the strategic defeat of its rival, […]

by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 13 September 2022 70 years ago the UK stepped up a brutal colonial intervention in Malaya, presenting it as a war against Chinese communism. British forces herded hundreds of thousands of people into fortified camps, heavily bombed rural areas and resorted to extensive propaganda to win the conflict. The so-called […]

Phil Miller and Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 29 June 2022 Exclusive: David Cameron kept bombing Colonel Gaddafi’s forces in Libya after the UK military realised a banned terrorist group stood to gain from regime change. Part 3 of Declassified UK’s investigation into the Manchester bombing Britain’s military knew that fighters from an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist organisation […]

by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 28 June 2022 MI5 and Greater Manchester Police had numerous opportunities to stop Salman Abedi gaining military experience and contacts in Libya for years before the 2017 Manchester bombing – but they gave him free rein. Salman Abedi was never detained at UK border despite his known contacts with extremists […]

by Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 27 June 2022 Salman Abedi and his closest family were part of Libyan militias benefitting from British covert military support six years before he murdered 22 people at the Manchester Arena in 2017. He is likely to have been radicalised by his experience. Close friend of Abedi convicted of terrorism […]

by Mark Curtis and Richard Norton-Taylor, Declassified UK, 8 June 2022 ‘Global Nato’. Help Taiwan ‘defend itself’. Recover the ‘whole’ of Ukraine. Promote ‘the free world’ – UK foreign policy under Liz Truss has become a series of empty slogans from a declining power desperate to remain a major one. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, foreign […]

by Paul Rogers and Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 18 May 2022 Russia’s poor military performance in its invasion of Ukraine hardly demonstrates the need to increase the UK’s already large defence budget; if anything, it shows the opposite. Last week Russia celebrated Victory Day, marking the end of the Great Patriotic War, its name for […]

by Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 10 March 2022 Amid ongoing atrocities by Russian forces in Ukraine, far-right resistance groups appear to be in possession of UK-made anti-tank weapons. A Ukrainian neo-Nazi group in the besieged city of Kharkiv is said to have received anti-tank missiles made in Belfast. Images of the controversial […]