Highly-sensitive telephone conversations on Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist hotline have been recorded by hackers.
The force said it launched an investigation after being made aware that the phone calls might have been breached.
A force statement said: “We are aware of an issue whereby telephone conversations relating to the anti-terror hotline were recorded.
“Officers are currently looking into the matter and appropriate action will be taken.”
Press Association
JONATHAN OWEN
A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.
“Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi’s lies used to justify the Iraq war.
He tries to defend his actions: “My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime’s oppression.”
The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as “facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence” by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.
But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him “we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie”, he simply replies: “Yes.”
US officials “sexed up” Mr Janabi’s drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell’s former chief of staff. “I brought the White House team in to do the graphics,” he says, adding how “intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy”.
As for his former boss: “I don’t see any way on this earth that Secretary Powell doesn’t feel almost a rage about Curveball and the way he was used in regards to that intelligence.”
Another revelation in the series is the real reason why the FBI swooped on Russian spy Anna Chapman in 2010. Top officials feared the glamorous Russian agent wanted to seduce one of US President Barack Obama’s inner circle. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got “closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership… she got close enough to disturb us”.
The fear that Chapman would compromise a senior US official in a “honey trap” was a key reason for the arrest and deportation of the Russian spy ring of 10 people, of which she was a part, in 2010. “We were becoming very concerned,” he says. “They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.” Mr Figliuzzi refuses to name the individual who was being targeted.
Several British spies also feature in the programme, in the first time that serving intelligence officers have been interviewed on television. In contrast to the US intelligence figures, the British spies are cloaked in darkness, their voices dubbed by actors. BBC veteran reporter Peter Taylor, who worked for a year putting the documentary together, describes them as “ordinary people who are committed to what they do” and “a million miles” from the spies depicted in film. He adds: “What surprised me was the extent to which they work within a civil service bureaucracy. Everything has to be signed off… you’ve got to have authorisation signed in triplicate.”
Would-be agents should abandon any Hollywood fantasies they may have, says Sonya Holt at the CIA recruitment centre. “They think it’s more like the movies, that they are going to be jumping out of cars and that everyone carries a weapon… Yes we’re collecting intelligence but we don’t all drive fast cars. You’re going to be writing reports; you’re in meetings so it’s not always that glamorous image of what you see in the movies.”
www.independent.co.uk, 01 APRIL 2012
By Kiran Stacey and Hannah Kuchler
Labour suffered a humiliating by-election defeat in Bradford West after a late surge by George Galloway, the leftwing Respect party member and former Labour MP.
In a result he dubbed the “Bradford Spring”, Mr Galloway secured 18,341 votes, pushing Imran Hussein of Labour into second with 8,201 votes. The anti-war politician’s party won just over 1,000 votes the last time the seat was contested in 2010.
“Labour has been hit by a tidal wave in a seat it held for many decades in a city it dominated for 100 years,” said Mr Galloway.
The by-election, called after Labour MP Marsha Singh resigned due to ill health, was “the most sensational result in British by-election history bar none”, said Mr Galloway. The Labour party had held the seat since 1974.
Respect pulled ahead of the other parties after Conservative support collapsed. Jackie Whiteley, Conservative candidate, came third with 2,746 votes. Tory party strategists blamed the furore over George Osborne’s Budget two weeks ago for the poor performance.
But the result will come as more of a blow for Labour and will renew questions about the leadership of Ed Miliband. The official opposition party previously viewed the constituency as a safe seat, holding it by over 6,000 votes just two years ago.
Mr Galloway ran on a campaign focused on his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which won him a lot of support among Bradford’s large Muslim community.
But Salma Yaqoob, the leader of the Respect party, said the people of Bradford West had also abandoned Labour because they felt it was not providing a real alternative to the coalition government’s public spending cuts.
“The three main parties are not connecting with the people. We have austerity from the Conservatives, austerity supported by the Lib Dems and austerity light from Labour,” she told the BBC’s Today programme.
Ms Yaqoob advocated investment rather than cuts, saying the signs of turnround in the US economy had come without austerity.
Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, was keen to stress that the party’s problem was “particular” to Bradford. Labour had maintained support until last week, when the “bandwagon effect” took over, she told the Today programme.
She said the party had not taken the constituency for granted and would try now to rebuild the strong links Labour still had with the local community.
Mr Galloway returns to parliament after a two-year hiatus, having unsuccessfully contested the east London seat of Poplar and Limehouse in 2010.
He is a divisive and controversial figure, having previously praised Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, and subsequently worked for Press TV, the Iranian state broadcaster.
One of Mr Galloway’s first messages after declaring victory on Twitter read: “Long live Iraq. Long live Palestine, free, Arab, dignified.”
By Sarah Knapton
It’s unlikely that you will have heard of Pasqua Rosee. And yet, on your average walk to work, you probably pass more reminders of his legacy than anyone else’s.
Rosee brought coffee to London. He opened his first coffee house in a shed in the churchyard of St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill in 1652. Rosee was the servant of a British goods trader named Daniel Edwards. Edwards had met Rosee in Izmir, Turkey, and brought him back to England, along with his recipe for a rich, thick mud-like drink known as “coffee.”
So popular was this new drink with Edwards’ London friends that he arranged for the beans to be imported and helped Rosee set up his first business.
It was the start of a gastro-financial revolution. By 1675 there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England and Rosee had branched out in Europe, establishing Paris’ first coffee shop in 1672.
His coffee house eventually inspired Procpopio Cuto to open the Café Procope which brought together the likes of Votaire, Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson and sparked the French enlightenment.
And by 1688 Edward Lloyd, encouraged by the success of Rosee, had opened his own coffeehouse – Lloyds of London. It became an important meeting place for sailors, merchants, and ship owners and Lloyd kept them up to date with reliable shipping news. It was here that the modern insurance industry and stock market was born.
And Turkish coffee, or kahve, had been responsible.
The endlessly inventive milky, frothy, frappa-latte-chinos churned out by Starbucks today bear little resemblance to the thimbles of muddy exotica enjoyed by the 17th century renaissance gentleman. But if you visit Izmir today you can still taste a drink which has changed little in half a millennium.
And all in a setting that inspired Homer to pen The Iliad and encouraged Alexander the Great to stop conquering for a while and take in the view.
Prepared by boiling finely powdered roasted beans in a pot – or cezve – the coffee is left to settle into a thick, strong, sludge. The drinker can usually manage around four or five sips before the dregs at the bottom become too viscous to finish.
So ingrained is coffee in Turkish culture that the Turkish word for breakfast, kahvaltı, means “before coffee” while the word for brown is kahverengi, literally “the colour of coffee”.
The Turks believed coffee to be a strong aphrodisiac and a spouse refusing to drink it was a legitimate cause for divorce.
In Izmir you would be pushed to find a more tranquil or historically important spot to enjoy a cup than by the harbour. Dubbed “beautiful Izmir’ by the Turks, the city sits barely more than a few feet above the tideless Aegean, surrounded by mountains.
The climate is balmy and Mediterranean but the scorching summers are cooled by the refreshing sea breezes.
The palm lined promenade of Kordon is bustling with bars, restaurants and coffee houses and gives off an exotically evocative aroma of Shisha pipes, spices and, of course, coffee.
It faces west making it an ideal spot to catch the setting sun as it sinks into the harbour. The impressive Konak pier was designed by Gustave Eiffel. Its lattice work is based on the same engineering which holds up the Eiffel tower and the Statue of Liberty.
Almost all of the great ancient empires, the Lydians, Persians, Romans and Ottomans, to name but a few, have seen their empires rise and fall between the walls of Izmir.
And looking out across the water over to the mountains it is easy to see why settlers chose the port more than 8,500 years ago.
Legend has it that the city was founded by the Amazons and was originally named Smyrna after the warrior-queen of Hellenistic mythology. The city was the birthplace of Homer and The Iliad was first recounted on the banks of the Meles stream, between 750-700 BC.
Modern day Izmir, however stands on a slightly different spot to the original footprint of Smyrna, a curiosity brought about by Alexander the Great who according to legend was visited by the goddess Nemesis in a dream having stopped to rest on Mt Pagus, a hill outside the walls of the original city. Nemesis ordered the city be moved to the hillside.
Whether anyone seemed to object to such a whimsical uprooting of an entire city is not recorded. The oracle of Claros predicted the citizens would be four times happier than before.
Undoubtedly the city continued to prosper, largely driven by its location on important trade routes. Aristotle even travelled to give lectures nearby for three years.
Strabo, the ancient geographer wrote that Izmir was the most beautiful Ionian city of the time, even rivaling nearby Ephesus.
And a visit to Ephesus gives some hint as to how astonishing Izmir must have been in ancient times.
At its height, Ephesus was the capital of the Asian part of the Roman Empire and housed a population of 200,000. Although only partly excavated Ephesus is a vast sprawling reminder of how advanced ancient cultures were. It is still possible to walk down one of the multitude of ruined streets on a busy day in the tourist season and not encounter another soul.
Cleopatra, Marc Anthony and St Paul all visited the city and it held the magnificent Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Although the temple has now gone, the façade of the Celsus Library is arguably one of the most beautiful and impressive examples of Roman architecture left standing. It was the third largest library in the classical world. Visitors entering the library can still pass the same four female statues representing wisdom, character, judgement and experience.
Legend has it that Mary, the mother of Jesus, came to live near Ephesus with St John shortly before her death. Both Christian and Muslim pilgrims still travel to the small house on Mount Bulbul in which locals believed she died on August 15th every year. The grave of St John is also to be found nearby, under a later basilica.
Izmir finds itself at the crossroads of civilisations. It was the east of the west and the west of the east where culture, religion and mystics gathered and fused into elaborate tapestry. Mosques, synagogues and churches still sit happily side-by-side in testament to its embracing and liberal attitude.
It is no wonder that amid such a convivial atmosphere of acceptance that the coffee houses flourished when they were first introduced in the middle of the 15th century. And with them came a whole mysticism of their own.
While the Chinese were staring into tea leaves, a similar way of telling the future was being decoded from the coffee grounds in Turkey.
Even today the locals are quick to swipe your cup away and peer into the dregs to pick out the shape of a butterfly or a ring or a mounted rider.
And the mysterious potency of coffee travelled with the beans to London. It was said the new drink could stop headaches, cure wind, gout, scurvy, prevent miscarriages and sore eyes.
It is unsurprising that coffee took on such allure given the area from which it originated. Izmir has been famed as a spot for healing since ancient times.
The Agamemnon Spas which were cited by Homer are now known as the Balcova Spas and it is said their thermal waters can cure upper respiratory conditions, chronic infections, rheumatism, metabolism and skin problems. The spas at Cesme are also said to cure genealogical, urinary and liver problems. In the volcanic landscape of Alacati herbal baths are prepared using the waters which are renowned for treating bone and joint disorders.
The region is also peppered with Turkish bath houses. So if you don’t wish to drink the mud there will always be someone nearby to coat you in it.
Yet it is likely the famed good health of Izmir’s inhabitants was largely to do with the diet of its people.
Despite straddling two continents the cuisine of Izmir is far more European than Asian.
The oldest olive oil workshop in the world is found just 38km away in the fishing village of Urla, which dates from 4000BC. Aubergines, peppers and pumpkin and figs are all are all staples. Izmir’s Kofte, salted fish, and sardines cooked in vine leaves are famed throughout Turkey. In almost every street, carts sell freshly baked simit – a ring of bread coated in sesame seeds which is often eaten for breakfast.
Inland the plains are famed for aniseed, artichokes, onions, melons and tangerines as well as some of the only mastic tree gardens in the world. Herbs grown for salad dishes include mallow, stinging nettle, dandelions and teasel.
The fishing boats still bring in a steady stream of red mullet, guilt headed bream, sea bass and whiting while the vines of huge vineyards soak up the sun on the mountainside.
It is through its trade of such wines, food and oils as well as ongoing traditions of jewellery making and textiles that Izmir has flourished.
The ancient Agora is one of the best-preserved Roman market places in the world, its vast three story arches standing testament to the importance of commerce in the city.
The modern equivalent, the Kemeralti is similarly evocative. The old bazaar is a cavernous maze of jewellers, carpet sellers and, of course, coffeehouses.
So the next time you are handing over your change for a cup of coffee, it’s worth remembering the role Izmir played. And not only in the coffee. For the world’s first parchment was created here in ancient times which would eventually lead to paper, cardboard and the cup holding your drink. The first metal coin was also struck in nearby Sardis.
Izmir’s story is fascinating and well worth exploring. I could go on. But, strangely, I feel like stopping for a cup of coffee.
Details:
We stayed at the Movenpick in Izmir and flew with Turkish Airlines.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/turkey/8678795/Wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee-in-Turkeys-beautiful-Izmir.html
Former US president George Bush and his former counterpart Tony Blair were found guilty of war crimes by The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal which held a four day hearing in the Malaysia.
The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against peace and humanity when they invaded Iraq in 2003 in blatant violation of international law.
The judges ruled that war against Iraq by both the former heads of states was a flagrant abuse of law, act of aggression which amounted to a mass murder of the Iraqi people.
In their verdict, the judges said that the United States, under the leadership of Bush, forged documents to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
They further said the findings of the tribunal be made available to members of the Rome Statute and the names of Bush and Blair be entered into a war crimes register.
Both Bush and Blair repeatedly said the so-called war against terror was targeted at terrorists.
Help us decide which five military leaders are represented at Enemy Commanders: Britain’s Greatest Foes, a celebrity speaker event on Saturday 14 April 2012. Find out more about the shortlist and how to place your vote.
Mustafa Kemal AtatürkDates: 1881-1938
“I don’t order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time it takes us to die, other troops and commanders can come and take our places.”
Mustafa Kemal at Gallipoli, April 1915
A seasoned veteran of the Balkan Wars, Kemal fought a tenacious defensive campaign at Gallipoli in 1915 which forced the Allied invasion force to withdraw. He would later become the ‘Father of modern Turkey’.
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Mustafa Kemal was born in Salonika and began his military career as an Ottoman Army cadet, studying at the Harbiye military college in Istanbul from 1899 until 1905. His initial service was with a cavalry regiment in Syria. During this period he joined the reformist Motherland and Liberty secret society in opposition to Sultan Abd al Hamid II. Although he believed in the separation of the military from politics, Kemal was a member of the Committee of Union and Progress and played a role in the ‘Young Turk’ Revolution that ended the sultan’s absolutist rule and restored parliament.
Kemal served with distinction in Tripolitania (Libya) during the Italo-Turkish War (1911-12), repelling the Italians at Tobruk and successfully defending Derna despite being wounded in an air raid. During the Balkan Wars (1912-13), he took part in the Turkish amphibious landing in Thrace and the capture of Erdine from the Bulgarians. In 1913 he was made Ottoman military attaché to all Balkan states and promoted to colonel.
Despite opposing Ottoman involvement in the First World War, once it had started he threw himself wholeheartedly into the conflict. During the Dardanelles campaign Kemal commanded the 19th Division before being made chief of staff of the 5th Army. He displayed great leadership and tactical acumen, reacting immediately to the Allied landing at Anzac Cove in April 1915. He launched successful counter-attacks against the Australians and New Zealanders as they attempted to take the high ground surrounding the landing areas. By nightfall on 25 April they had suffered over 2,000 casualties and remained stuck on the beaches.
In the weeks that followed he led his men at many of the campaign’s fiercest engagements, including the Battle of Sari Bair (6-21 August), the Battle of Chunuk Bair at Anzac (7-19 August) and the offensive from Sulva at Scimtar Hill (21 August). Following these battles he was granted the title of ‘Pasha’. Personally brave, Kemal expected the same from his men, declaring: ‘I don’t order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time it takes us to die, other troops and commanders can come and take our places.’
Following these triumphs, Kemal was sent to command XVI Corps on the eastern Anatolian front. In August 1916 he launched a successful counter-offensive against the Russians, capturing Bitlis and Mus. When the Russian Army of the Caucasus collapsed during the Revolution of 1917, Kemal was transferred to Palestine. He was given command of the 7th Army, but following the loss of Baghdad, he became increasingly fearful that the war was lost.
He also expressed anger at a government that was unable to supply his men with adequate weapons and supplies, and resented the transfer of supreme command from Turkish generals to the German Erich von Falkenhayn and Otto Liman von Sanders. After resigning his command in protest he accompanied the Crown Prince to Germany, visiting the Western Front and concluding that the Central Powers were defeated. Restored to his command by the new sultan, Mehed VI, he ended the war in Aleppo after his army was forced to retreat following the Battle of Megiddo.
With the Ottoman capital occupied by the Allies, most of the Balkans gone and Turkey bereft of its Arab provinces, Kemal felt a personal duty to fight for the integrity of the remaining Turkish heartland of Anatolia. Posted in 1919 as inspector general of the army in northern Anatolia, he quickly started to act independently, resigning from the Ottoman Army and helping to arouse nationalist feeling in the aftermath of the Greek landing at Smyrna. The First Great National Assembly at Ankara, now a rival power bloc to the Ottoman government in Istanbul, gathered in spring 1920 with Kemal as speaker. It later elected him president.
In 1921 the Greeks advanced from Smyrna, but were held before Ankara at the Battle of Sakarya in August-September. Following this success, Kemal was made commander-in-chief with the rank of marshal. He went on the offensive the following year, capturing Smyrna in September and forcing the Greeks to evacuate Anatolia.
A skilled statesmen as well as a great soldier, at the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne (1923) Kemal was given a Turkey in Anatolia free of foreign troops and full control of the straits. Anger at the weakness and defeatism of the sultan in Istanbul led him to work for the abolition of the sultanate in 1922, the proclamation of a republic in 1923, and the abolition of the caliphate in 1924. As ‘Atatürk’ (Father of the Turkish Nation), Kemal steered Turkey through a period of turmoil, but it emerged as a modern secular state, with a neutral foreign policy, planned economy, westernised education system and a strong army.
Hard in battle, Kemal was nevertheless gracious to his enemies, later writing of the Allied soldiers killed at Gallipoli: ‘Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives… You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours… you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.’
