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 […]
Topic: Syria
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 Phil Miller and Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 25 August 2021 Britain’s regime change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have been catastrophic. A key reason is that UK policy has no moral consistency — friends and enemies are interchangeable over time, based purely on short-term pragmatism and rarely on ethical concerns or the […]
By Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 20 July 2021 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. The UK government has spent at least […]
By Mark Curtis, Declassified UK, 26 April 2021 Millions of its readers believe the Guardian offers critical, independent reporting that is different to the right-wing, billionaire-controlled UK media. But its limited coverage of British foreign and security policies gives a misleading picture of what the UK does in the world. The paper is in reality […]
by Mark Curtis Declassified UK, 18 May 2020 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 little role in the conflict […]
By Mark Curtis Declassified UK, 2 May 2020 The UK government’s failure to provide protective equipment to all health staff treating coronavirus victims prompts questions whether ministers are legally culpable for failing to prevent deaths. But UK ministers routinely act with impunity and every prime minister since 1945 has been complicit in deaths abroad. At […]
by Mark Curtis Declassified UK, 9 March 2020 Britain’s national press consistently portrays Britain as a supporter of noble objectives such as human rights and democracy. The extraordinary extent to which the public is being misinformed about the UK’s foreign and military policies is revealed in new statistical research by Declassified UK. The research suggests […]
By Mark Curtis and Matt Kennard Declassified UK, 17 September 2019 The United Kingdom is fighting at least seven covert wars largely outside parliamentary or democratic oversight. The British government states that its policy on the covert wars it fights is “not to comment, and to dissuade others from commenting or speculating, about the operational […]
by Mark Curtis Published in Middle East Eye, 3 May 2019 Eight years on from Nato’s war in Libya in 2011, as the country enters a new phase in its conflict, I have taken stock of the number of countries to which terrorism has spread as a direct product of that war. The number is at […]