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BA Flight 149

That is a perfectly reasonable request. I need to check that with those who have signed the document, but the Minister is right to make that request and I will reflect on it. I will read out the relevant sections, which do not reveal any sensitive details, I hope. Soldier A, let me say, for lack of a better expression, says:"““I submit this affidavit/statement of truth as my final correspondence on the matter regarding my involvement with Flight BA 149. That details…are true and accurate accounts of events as recalled by me to the very best of my memory and ability as per my direct involvement in the covert operation flown into Kuwait on flight BA 149, and the subsequent gathering of intelligence material of Iraqi troop strengths, positions and unit identification in 1990. That Operation Iscariot was an INC organised and executed operation. That I was on flight BA 149, as a member of INC and the subsequent mission/operation as outlined.””" A further affidavit, from someone who I shall for the purpose of the debate call Soldier B, says:"““That entire operation…was…authorised by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. That ‘the party’ only agreed to supply basic facts surrounding operation to help bring out the truth.””" That refers to the affidavits."““That ‘Iscariot’ was an INC operation, INC standing for ‘Increment’. INC was formed shortly after the Iranian embassy siege of 1980 when Margaret Thatcher authorised the set-up and operation of INC due to increased media attention being focused upon the Special Air Service after ‘Operation Nimrod’ was screened live worldwide that ended the siege. Members are/were drawn mainly from ex forces and even serving forces personnel.”” " The Minister will understand that I have been given some information. I have had to try to make a judgement in my own way, as best I can and as responsibly as I can, as to what I should say in open session and what I should not say. Let me just say this, which I hope is acceptable. The information that I have been given is that the use of INC was designed to provide Ministers at the time with perfect deniability, that members of INC were paid from secret overseas bank accounts and, crucially, promised immunity from prosecution for any alleged crimes committed while overseas. That deniability is at the heart of the letters that the then Prime Minister, John Major, wrote to the present Deputy Prime Minister saying that there were no British serving personnel on board. There were no British serving personnel on board, but only because serving British personnel were not used. Instead, others who had resigned were used in an arm’s-length capacity. Therefore, the impression given is not consistent with the action that was taken. There is also external corroboration of those statements, or at least of the events of those days. Corroboration has come from Nate Howell, the then United States ambassador in Kuwait, who has confirmed publicly on the record that such an operation took place, and from Ed Ciriello, who has declared himself as a CIA agent working alongside MI6 in Saudi Arabia at the time of the invasion. It has also come from Captain Lawrence Eddingfield, captain of the USS Antietam, who rescued two of the mission team. Richard Tomlinson, the former MI6 agent—the Minister might want to give less credence to this—e-mailed me to confirm that he was aware of the operation and that it did take place. He gave me details consistent with the affidavits that I have referred to. In the letter to which I have referred, the former Prime Minister John Major said that ““no firm evidence”” was available to suggest that an invasion was to take place. We know from public historical records, which are now open, that the head of the CIA told the then President Bush a week before the invasion that the Iraqis would invade, and that this warning was passed to both Washington and London. We are told that there was no attempt to influence BA’s decision to operate flight 149. Given that we know that the invasion started when the plane was four hours’ flying time from Kuwait, the decision not to inform the captain clearly suggests that a decision was taken to allow the plane to land. I am not making a judgment as to whether it was correct to put those special forces in on that occasion; there was clearly a danger to passengers and crew, but there may well have been a calculation that it was in the national interest to do that. I am not in a position to make that judgment, and I do not make that accusation. Nor am I in any way criticising the individuals who took part in the operation, who doubtless showed considerable dedication and heroism in a difficult situation. What I am criticising is the failure of successive Governments to tell us the truth subsequent to those events, and their failure to understand the legacy for the crew and passengers, which cannot be dealt with satisfactorily until there is closure on this matter. That is the issue that I want the Minister predominantly to address when he replies. It is also clear from evidence in sworn affidavits submitted to the US Court that the Government of the day advised British Airways that it was safe to fly. In particular, BA had been briefed by the person described as the MI6 head in Kuwait, whose name I also have, that there would be no invasion, so BA appears also to have been misled. With 200,000 troops and tanks gathered on the border very close to Kuwait, and given the general background noise from Iraq at the time, I suggest that it was a reasonable assumption that there might well have been an invasion, even if there was no detailed intelligence to confirm that. The plane touched down, moreover, at a deserted airport. Every other flight from every other airline had been cancelled for hours, there were no staff, and the one or two individuals who were hanging around were considerably surprised when a plane touched down. We are asked to believe that Britain—with all our expertise and intelligence, and with people on the ground—was the only country in the world not to realise what was going on, and to be unable to cancel our flight into the country. That stretches credibility. I also point out in support of my proposition that the time of invasion was known. An unlikely source, Mrs. Thatcher’s memoirs, ““The Downing Street Years””, gives a timeline significantly different from the one that she gave to Parliament—one which corresponds to the timeline that I believe actually occurred. So even the Prime Minister of the day herself changed her mind about the version of events given to the House of Commons, but no correction of the comments made at the time has been given to the House. There is a human aspect to this issue, and that is the experience of the hostages. I have met some of those who were held in Kuwait and subsequently in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. Many of them bear the scars to this day in terms of how they feel and the effect that it has had on their lives. Even if they did not experience physical abuse, they are still scarred. Plenty of them did experience physical abuse and there are eye-witness accounts of murder, mock executions, serious assaults, rape and other sexual assaults. The Minister will know that a dossier of the full horrors was compiled. Some 1,868 people were interviewed on the instigation of the then Defence Secretary, Tom King, but the dossier has never been released. The Minister was asked, when he was Defence Secretary, to release that document by the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). When he refused to do so, I understand that she reported him to the parliamentary ombudsman under the open Government rules. I am not clear what became of that complaint: perhaps the Minister will tell us. One of the major demands of the crew and passengers, for whom I am speaking today, is that the dossier compiled in Operation Sandcastle, as I believe it was called, should be put in the public domain. If it contains sensitive security details, such as the names of individuals, they can be redacted before publication. However, it is not acceptable to those who went through so much for the issue to be swept under the carpet, as appears to have been done. Those who were present witnessed some horrendous examples of brutality by the Iraqis on Kuwaiti civilians. They could see them from where they were staying. Those people came from the normality of Britain and were catapulted into that situation, for months on end. They had to live in terrible conditions, often with no running water, and it is not surprising that the legacy of their experiences has remained with them for many years. Those to whom I have spoken, both crew and passengers, have genuinely not been motivated by a desire to obtain compensation. However, they are angry with the Government—not this Government in particular, but the British Government as an entity—that French passengers won more than £3 million from British Airways in compensation, and that US passengers were paid off when BA settled in secret rather than have the matter exposed in a Texas court. I shall say no more on the issue of compensation, because I am aware of its sensitivity. The plane, BA 149, was destroyed by, as I understand it, a US fighter plane, to prevent its falling into the hands of Saddam Hussein. That may have been a sensible military decision, but it meant that BA got a huge insurance payout, unlike the passengers on the plane. This Government’s response has been disappointing, and I hope that the Minister will go some way towards redressing that this afternoon. I am not making a political issue of this. The events to which I refer took place under a different Administration back in 1990, and insofar as they were challenged, were challenged effectively by the present Deputy Prime Minister, who made it his business to do so as the then shadow Transport Secretary. Naively, I thought that when information was brought to the attention of the present Government action would follow—after all, to put it crudely, righting a wrong from the past was no skin off their nose—yet I am disappointed by the response I received. I wrote to the Prime Minister on 16 October 2006 to ask him to do three things. I make the same requests of the Minister for Europe. I asked the Prime Minister if he would meet a small delegation of passengers and crew to hear their concerns, which has not happened since their return from Iraq. I asked if he would arrange for the release, subject to the removal of operationally sensitive material, of the internal review papers relating to the episode, which I understand goes under the name of Operation Sandcastle. Finally, I asked him to instigate an inquiry to consider all aspects of the episode and what might be learned from it. I am sorry to say that the Prime Minister did not reply, so I wrote a further letter on 20 November asking him to do so. In December, I received a reply not from the Prime Minister but from a Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, whose substantive comment was:"““Regarding BA flight 149, the Government of the day made its position clear and I have nothing further to add.””" That is far from helpful, given the concerns that have been expressed. I received a letter from Downing street, but it was written by somebody as far away from the Prime Minister as possible, so given the strong feelings of the crew and passengers, I wrote again to the Prime Minister, on 10 January, to ask for his response,. All I received in return was a further letter from the Foreign Office Minister in which he said:"““I have, however, suggested to Ann Clwyd that passengers and crew might like to take the opportunity to meet the FCO’s Director of Consular Services, Rob Macaire, so that he can hear of their experiences and perhaps seek their thoughts on how we could further develop our consular support to British Nationals caught up in traumatic events overseas.””" In so far as that is an offer, it is better than nothing, but it is not much. I am pursuing the issue for two reasons. The first is that I do not like cover-ups. I do not like the fact that the House was told something that was subsequently shown to be incorrect and that no correction was made to the House. As a matter of parliamentary democracy, there should be a correction. Most of all, however, I am pursuing the matter for the crew and passengers who suffered weeks or months of hell under Saddam Hussein. After all, in recent years the Government told us that Saddam Hussein had to be dealt with because he was a threat to human rights. That was apparently part of the justification for the Iraq war. The individuals held in Iraq deserve better treatment than they have received from this country. Through no fault of their own, they ended up in a terrible situation and were treated appallingly by Saddam Hussein’s regime. The least they should expect from this country is an explanation, so that they can finally achieve closure on an important matter.