What are the Russians hiding????

The pics are 1 the Arctic Sea Cargo ship and 2 a Russian Ilyushin IL-76 Cargo Plane.

Ok everyone knows about the "hijacking" if I may use that term of the Arctic sea cargo ship.

Something does not ring true about this!!!!

The Maltese-registered Arctic Sea left Finland around July 23 with a delivery to Algeria on August 4. It made contact with British coastguards in Dover on July 28 but went missing three days later.

The Malta Maritime Authority said that it had received reports that the ship was boarded for 12 hours by armed masked men on July 24. A Swedish police spokeswoman said that everything had seemed normal when Swedish authorities had a brief telephone call with someone identified as the captain on July 31.

The Arctic Sea went missing after passing through the Channel from Finland, prompting fears that it had fallen victim to the first act of piracy in European waters for hundreds of years.

Dmitri Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to Nato, said that the ship had been attacked by a “well-organised network” of pirates. He said that the issue of security at sea would be raised at a Nato-Russia Council meeting next month.

The Arctic Sea was then spotted by coastguards on Aug 14 in international waters 500 miles off the West African island archipelago of Cape Verde and the vessel was placed under ongoing surveillance by Russian and Nato military.

Finnish police investigators confirmed this weekend that a ransom demand, said to be around GBP900,000 had been received by the Arctic Sea's Russian owners.

Anyway Russian authorities have not given information on the precise circumstances of the ship's interception near Cape Verde, some 2500 miles away from the vessel's intended location.

The naval operation, which took place at 21:00 GMT on Sunday night, followed a weekend of joint Russia-Nato surveillance of the "hijacked" Maltese flagged ship culminating in its detention by the Russian anti-submarine frigate, the Ladny.

The men accused of hijacking the Arctic Sea were brought to Russia yesterday as investigators continued to interrogate crew members about the ship’s mysterious voyage.

Eleven crew members and the eight suspected hijackers landed in separate aircraft at a military airfield outside Moscow, where the accused were led away in handcuffs by special forces troops.

Speculation over a possible secret military cargo on the vessel was intensified by the manner of their return.

The two groups and an investigative team flew to Moscow in three Il-76 transporters, one of Russia’s largest aircraft, which are normally used to move heavy weapons.

A quick look on wiki tells us that the plane was originally built for the military, but has subsequently seen extensive service as a commercial freighter, especially for the delivery of outsized or very heavy cargo.

Well call me bluff old sceptic but rumours were all over the place as to the cargo on the ship at point of hijack. Even the Somali pirates have the brains to go for oil tankers and cruise liners. A million quid worth of wood as per the original ships manifest is not a hijack target.

So why would the Russians chase it to Africa?
Why would the Captain with Navy assistance return the ship to a Black Sea Russian port?
Why require 3 heavy lift Aircraft flown from Russia to Cape Verde to bring 8 bad guys and 11 crew back to Russia?........what for some wood!!!!
Anyone for dodgy Russian weapons sales to the Middle East??????

Colonel Stuart Tootal

We are all quite aware of recent verbal attacks on the government in relationship to its policy on troops and equipment in Afghanistan, by former and serving military commanders.

Jock Stirrup
Mike Jackson
Bob Stewart
Charles Guthrie
Brig Ed Butler

Mr 21 out of 23 Bob Ainsworth having carried out weekend television jokes and radio broadcasts by trying to make cheap political gain over the tories has failed to stem the flow criticism.

Today Gen Richard Dannant launches another stream in the Telegraph.

I dont think Dannants comments will carry much weight but perhaps this mans might.

Colonel Stuart Tootal was O.C. 3 para.
He left the army a year ago under what can only be described at absolute disgust of the government treatment of UK Armed Forces.

His 1,200-strong battle group was the first to set boot in Helmand province in 2006 on a totally unrealistic “peace support mission”. They landed shortly after John Reid, then defence secretary, announced that “we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot”.

During its six-month tour of duty, 3 Para fired more than 479,000 rounds and became embroiled in the fiercest fighting for a generation: 15 of Tootal’s group were killed in battle and 46 wounded.

Colonel Stuart Tootal said: "Soldiers are robust and losing comrades will hit hard, but it will also reinforce their determination. He went on, ministers are risking soldiers' lives by failing to provide the right resources and "a proper strategy and a justification" that the British public can understand. He criticised the PM saying, "Gordon Brown took a reassuring tone, saying there had been a 60% increase in the number of helicopters in Afghanistan and £6 billion had been set aside for future investment over the next 10 years". Tootal is sceptical, calling the provision “woefully inadequate”.

“The issue is not generally lack of air support, because support provided by the Americans is very good,” he says. “The key is lack of troop-carrying helicopters. It’s a major weakness. We had six helicopters, of which we were the majority users, and we were one battle group of 1,200 men in a total force of 3,500.

“You’ve now got nearly 9,000 troops in Helmand and while there’s been some increase, the Chinook fleet is only up by a few helicopters. A number of Sea Kings have been brought in but these are smaller and less able and Lynx can’t fly in the hottest part of the day and can only lift one or two individuals and a limited amount of equipment. So even though there has been — and will be — more helicopters, lift support for British troops in Helmand is still woefully inadequate.”

The issue has bite because the Taliban have adapted their tactics to take advantage of this weakness by killing with roadside bombs and improvised explosives: “It may be that the most recent casualties, from Operation Panther’s Claw, are not directly attributable to lack of helicopters but there are many, many troops who might have been alive today had we had enough helicopters.”

Tootal identified helicopters as a problem even before his troops left the UK. Having worked up a number of scenarios — raids on Taliban compounds and so on — he could see there would not be enough helicopter hours (ie, helicopters and/or crew to fly them) available to allow his teams to move as one force. “Every time someone turns round and says there isn’t an issue of helicopters, when clearly there is, how much credibility can the Government have?”

A damning final statement there I believe.

"Troops can't do everything from the air," he went on.

"But if they are using vehicles when a tactical situation dictates they should be using helicopters, they will be exposed to unnecessary risk and operations will lack vital flexibility."

Finally, he insisted: "The war in Afghanistan cannot be a half-hearted affair. It is a sad inevitability that there will be more losses.

"Our soldiers are doing a superb job. They accept risk but if they take risk due to shortages and the absence of a coherent and properly resourced strategy, the casualty rate will be higher and success will be elusive."

Post his resignation from the army after his tour of Helmand, he now has a new role as head of global security for a corporation. He may well wear a smart city suit but beneath his perfectly pressed shirt beats the heart of a soldier, dismayed at the continuing row over resources for our forces in Afghanistan and the lack of a clear objective.

He still gets e-mails from soldiers starting “Hiya Boss.

This story line is not going away........why can the government not see it???

Three More UK Soldiers Die In Afghanistan

This news comes less than 24 hours after the confirmation of the 200th Afghanistan fatality.
That news was then followed by confirmation of the 201st fatality.

Our service death toll is now 204.

This latest casualty group where from The 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. they sadly died in a blast while on patrol near Sangin in Helmand Province.

Dr David Kelly

In 2003 Dr David Kelly was found dead in the woods.

The Hutton Inquiry concluded that Dr Kelly took his own life. But did he?

This death is returning to haunt Labour as a group of doctors announced that they are mounting a legal challenge to overturn the finding of suicide.

Dr Kelly's body was found six years ago this week in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the grounds for war in Iraq.
Unusually, no coroner's inquest was held into his death.

The only official verdict has come from the Hutton Inquiry, commissioned by Tony Blair, which concluded that Dr Kelly, 59, died from loss of blood after cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.

Critics regarded the report as a 'whitewash', and Mr Blair remains acutely sensitive to the accusation that he has 'blood on his hands' over the scientist's death.
But now a team of 13 specialist doctors has compiled a detailed medical dossier that rejects the Hutton conclusion on the grounds that a cut to the ulnar artery, which is small and difficult to access, could not have caused death. A 12-page opinion concludes: "The bleeding from Dr Kelly's ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death. We advise the instructing solicitors to obtain the autopsy reports so that the concerns of a group of properly interested medical specialists can be answered."


In The Strange Death of David Kelly, Liberal-Democratic MP Norman Baker builds a strong case that the scientist was murdered. Despite Lord Hutton's dubious findings that Kelly killed himself, several troubling facts intruded to upend the British government's apple cart.

To summarise:

The lack of fingerprints found on the knife allegedly used by the scientist to slit his wrists; the lack of blood found at the scene, despite a verdict that he had sliced open an artery; unexplained contusions on Kelly's scalp; the position of the body discovered by searchers differed markedly from that alleged by detectives; bottled water, knife and wristwatch said to be found by detectives were not observed by the searchers who actually discovered the body; eight computers removed from Kelly's home and office by MI6 agents; missing dental records; the level of painkillers found in Kelly's stomach was "less than a third" of what is considered a fatal overdose by medical experts. On and on it goes...

One source told Baker that Dr. Kelly's death was "a wet operation, a wet disposal," a term used in intelligence circles to denote an assassination.

One motive which may have led to Kelly's murder was that the scientist was writing a book "exposing highly damaging government secrets before his mysterious death.

According to published reports, Kelly intended to reveal that he had warned Prime Minister Tony Blair "there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the British and American invasion." Despite warnings that the book would breach Britain's draconian Officials Secrets Act, Kelly sought advice on how he might bring his findings into a publishable form.

These reports also suggest that Kelly threatened to "lift the lid" on a larger scandal, "his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa."

Investigative journalists Bob Coen and Eric Nadler in their book Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail and a companion 90-minute documentary, Anthrax War, provide startling evidence that Kelly's death is linked to a secret world of germ warfare research.

Indeed, according to Coen and Nadler, David Kelly's secret dealings included a connection with Dr. Wouter Basson, the cardiologist who was the former head of the South African apartheid regime's clandestine biological and chemical warfare program, Project Coast.

During Basson's 1999 trial and subsequent acquittal, evidence presented by some 150 witnesses, including operatives linked to South African snatch-and-kill squads, tied Basson to chemical and biological research used in extrajudicial executions by the apartheid regime. It was further alleged that Project Coast had conducted active research into the fabrication of "ethnic weapons" that would specifically target South Africa's black population.

In Anthrax War, Basson states that his findings were shared with foreign scientists, including those affiliated with weapons research in Britain and the United States.

Coen and Nadler uncovered evidence that Kelly had discovered a "Porton Down-South Africa connection" linked to a global bioweapons black market. "We have proved there is a black ­market in anthrax. David Kelly was of particular interest to us because he was a world expert on anthrax and he was involved in some degree with assisting the secret germ warfare programme in apartheid South Africa," they are reported to have said.

Andrew Mackinlay, an MP blamed for humiliating Kelly "to the point of suicide" started "asking questions in the House of Lords" after the scientist's death "about Kelly's relationship with these South Africans, even making inquiries about South African links to Pasechnik's Regma firm."

Founded in 2000 by the deceased scientist, Regma Bio Technologies was headquartered on the Porton Down campus and had signed a contract with the U.S. Navy for anti-anthrax research.

What Mackinlay discovered about the entire operation was highly disturbing to say the least. His inquiry sparked "the convening of an extraordinary 'handling strategy meeting' involving thirteen officials from different government agencies. But any and all information about UK-South African germ work was withheld from the MP."

Mackinlay told Coen and Nadler, "This is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the British government."

The question is, did David Kelly threaten to reveal these "closely guarded secrets" in the book he was preparing, and was this a motive for certain "dark actors" to eliminate a person now considered "an enemy of the state"?

These programs are not Cold War relics. Biological weapons research continues today and remains one of the worlds most deadly secrets.
The evidence suggests that Dr. David Kelly, as Norman Baker alludes too "may have signed his own death warrant" by threatening to reveal this secret underworld menacing all humanity with unimaginable horrors.

More on Dr Kelly here