After a coup in the South American country of Bolivia in November 2019, democratically elected president Evo Morales was forced to flee. Foreign Office documents obtained by Declassified show Britain saw the new military-backed regime, which killed 18 protesters, as an opportunity to open up Bolivia’s lithium deposits to UK firms.
The CIA believes Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, or ‘MBS’, orchestrated the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. What can Britain, which routinely condemns human rights abuses by enemies, do to stop one of its closest allies?
Britain’s top military officer in the Middle East said leaders of a Gulf state are offering their young people a ‘hugely exciting future’ – days after the country’s unelected prime minister was accused of holding his daughters hostage, Declassified has found.
As new evidence emerges of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed holding his adult daughters ‘hostage’, Declassified has found that Queen Elizabeth has met the repressive leader on at least 10 occasions since the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’.
The queen’s second son has held 70 meetings with repressive Middle East monarchies in the decade since the Arab Spring uprisings. Most meetings took place after Prince Andrew’s role as official trade envoy ended in 2011 amid the Epstein scandal, with UK diplomatic support for his Gulf trips lasting into 2019.
The heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, has held 95 meetings with eight repressive monarchies in the Middle East since the ‘Arab Spring’ protests of 2011 threatened their power. Charles has played a key role in promoting £14.5-billion worth of UK arms exports to these regimes in the last decade.
Britain’s royal family has met members of autocratic Middle Eastern monarchies nearly once a fortnight since the crackdown on ‘Arab Spring’ protests began 10 years ago this month. Their visits have often coincided with human rights abuses in the Gulf, where pro-democracy activists are punished for criticising the Windsor ties to regimes.
The UK has just requested to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership but this trade deal could deepen the influence of multinational companies over Britain’s economy, make it harder to regulate Big Tech, and lower food standards and workers’ rights protections.
Britain’s Foreign Office knew Kenya’s Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) was involved in renditions of terror suspects yet paid for its new headquarters and continues assistance programmes, along with London’s Metropolitan Police, disclosures obtained by Declassified UK show.
The new ‘authorised history’ of GCHQ, Britain’s largest intelligence agency, ignores or simply dismisses its most controversial activities as supposed scandals, giving a thoroughly one-sided account of the spy agency.