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JIT jitters, porkies, lies, a musician and a belling cat on MH17...
Everything on Bellingcat and the official inquiry into the destruction of Flight MH17
Jürgen Cain Külbel is an ex-investigator for the criminal police of the Democratic Republic of Germany. He became a journalist after the reunification of Germany. He has managed to identify the author of the reports posted on the Bellingcat site which influenced the international police team tasked by Ukraine with establishing the cause of the destruction of Flight MH17. This amateur, who « found » evidence of Russian guilt which he claims to be « irrefutable », is in reality a musician, with no competence whatsoever in criminalistics.
VOLTAIRE NETWORK | BERLIN (GERMANY) | 5 APRIL 2019
FRANÇAIS DEUTSCH ITALIANO 
- A bouquet of flowers on the wreckage of Flight MH17. This Boeing 777, travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was destroyed on 17 July 2014 over the zones of combat between the Kiev putchists and the Donbass independentists, killing the 298 persons on board. Since then, the two camps have been accusing one another of being responsible for this catastrophe. The Western powers finally adopted the hypothesis published on the British Internet site Bellingcat.
He calls himself Daniël Romein. That is not his real name. We made an appointment to meet in a cafe. He sits down, seeming a little embarrassed. He has a friendly face. From time to time, he glances to the right. Then he looks at the people outside who are walking in the rain. « I always try to have a head start on my adversary », he says. And for him, the enemy is Russia. He wants to take precautions. « As a specialist in computers, I know what counter-measures I need to apply ». And he adds - « This job is risky, because I know that the Russians are really unhappy about our research ».
In February 2016, Daniël Romein met with a group of journalists in this cafe [1] - secretly, of course. Huib Modderkolk and Bert Lanting from the Amsterdam daily De Volkskrant wrote later that Romein’s « discoveries » were the foundation of the Bellingcat reports in 2015 and 2016 on the catastrophe of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Jikke Zijlstra and Michael de Smit, of Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS), a Dutch public service radio station, noted that - « Although [British subject Eliot] Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat, their Dutch employee, Daniël Romein, wrote the greater part of the report (in 2016) ». Modderkolk and Lanting even wrote that Romein had provided the basis for these reports, that he was the principal author of the studies, and that he works « in secret for the Bellingcat research collective. Almost no-one knows this. His family, his friends, his colleagues – most of them don’t know. He likes to maintain a small circle. He himself estimates their number at a maximum of ten. Last year (2015), he was engaged in research to discover which Russian soldiers were implicated in the destruction of Flight MH17 », and uses « his computer as a weapon. He watches his screen for hours, scrolling through Russian Web sites and the social media. He does this by choice, on top of his work as an IT professional. Sometimes he works very late – until two o’clock in the morning - and comes to work at the office the next morning with tired eyes ... that’s when it becomes difficult, and he can’t talk to anyone. « Sometimes it feels as if I’m living a double life ». Romein declared to the journalist that media attention should be focused on the people involved rather than on himself – he wants remain anonymous. « Only his colleagues in Bellingcat know his real identity », affirms De Volkskrant.
Daniël Romein, liaison agent between Bellingcat and the Joint Investigation TeamAround Christmas 2015, on the request of the founder of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, Romein sent his work of investigation and that of Bellingcat to the Dutch Openbaar Ministerie, in other words the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which takes precedence over the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) tasked with the international criminal investigation into the catastrophe of Flight MH17. The Public Minister declared that he would « pay serious attention to the information, including its usefulness for the criminal investigation ». « They are satisfied with our efforts and our work », declared Romein, who has regular contacts with the detectives from the JIT. For example, on an invitation from the JIT, he had on numerous occasions exchanged information on Bellingcat’s enquiries with the Public Prosecutor’s team. Eliot Higgins, the head alchemist of Bellingcat, was twice heard as a witness.
Bellingcat’s « criminological investigators »Eliot Higgins’ firm Bellingcat, the « research platform of citizen journalists » which brags that it carries out « criminalistic enquiries », enjoys an uninterrupted barrage of media hype in the dominant Western medias – due to their « investigations » into the catastrophe of Flight MH17 or in the case of the poisoning of the Skripals. However, the methodology of the group, its conclusions, and its impartiality raise some very serious doubts. The dominant Press unhesitatingly elevates the members of the team to the rank of « experts ». But the Bellingcats charged in 2015 and 2016 with the enquiry into the affair of Flight MH17 do not stand out either as recognised experts, nor as investigators who specialise in the legal sciences. They are
Pieter van Huis (Dutch), degree in History, Stijn Mitzer (Oryx), analyst and blogger, Daniel Romein, IT specialist Sean Case (British), specialist in environmental sciences and plants, Eliot Higgins, director of Bellingcat, without any significant qualification, the Americans Andrew Haggard, ex-member of the US army, Aric Toler, literary researcher and linguist, Nathan Patin, ex-intern in foreign politics and defence for the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, Veli-Pekka Kivimäki (Finnish), an officer at the University of the Finnish Defence Forces in Helsinki, Olaf Neitsch alias Timmi Allen (German), ex-employee in a service of the Ministry of State Security of the RDA , ex-owner of a pub, today an insurance salesman, Igor Ostanin (Magnitski), (Russian) freelancer, as well as Anders Klement of StopFake, an anti-Russian propaganda initiative based in Kiev.
We should keep on mind - independent of the fact that Bellingcat is supported by sponsors such as George Soros’ Open Society – that among the « founding members » of the group in 2014 and 2015, we find the British ex-spy Cameron Colquhoun and Nour Bakr from the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chris Bigger from the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as well as Christoph Koettl from the New York Times, Leroy Aliaume from BBC World, and Aaron Stein from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British research institute connected with the Intelligence Services – even a blind person could understand where Bellingcat’s « expertise of savoir-faire » is going. Their intention is to howl like a cat in heat, and make a lot of noise, all of it aimed at Russia.
Neutrality, objectivity, impartiality – the qualities which should distinguish a professional investigator and an expert – do not work this way. Normality in the daily life of the legal and security organisms of each country resides in the fact that the criminalistic investigations and associated reports are carried out by qualified experts, and that the resulting report, like any other proof, has in any case no conclusive value if it has been decided in advance. Only the tribunal can decide on its conclusive value. The reports must therefore contain a certain number of definite qualitative characteristics, such as the presentation of elements of proof, the method of investigation, etc. Journalists from the general public, in particular those of the trans-Atlantic persuasion, deliberately ignore the necessity of a precise scientific and legal approach, and fail to question the accuracy of Bellingcat’s reports on any point. They therefore practice the art of copy and paste so that later, they will be able to pocket the coward’s reward of thirty pieces of silver.
Why is « Daniël Romein » investigating the catastrophe of Flight MH17?Question of the enquiry: What motivates Daniël to analyse the catastrophe of MH17?
Result of the enquiry: Modderkolk and Lanting have written that « the images haunted him ». For him, the catastrophe is a mixture of terror and obsession… He has been interested in this region for some time. He learned Russian a long time ago … He visits all sorts of Web forums. « I wanted to know who did it ». The members of the Dutch forums seem ill-informed. He quickly seeks out Ukrainian and Russian forums. « Jikke Zijlstra and Michael de Smit from NOS, who qualified the search for the authors of these crimes as being almost obsessional », gave us this quote: « It’s on my mind a lot. The catastrophe really moved me. I thought it was so terrible, I was so angry, even though I knew none of the victims personally,.I wanted to know who were the idiots behind it all ».
The genesis of the research into the « Daniël Romein » CharacterAccording to Wikipedia: « Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is data collected from publicly available sources to be used in an Intelligence context.[1] In the Intelligence community, the term "open" refers to overt, publicly available sources (as opposed to covert or clandestine sources) ». The definition is rather pretentious, since it concerns no more than the minimal daily work of criminal investigations; going from house to house, knocking on doors, so to speak – but in this case, it means visiting the Internet on the World Wide Web, scrolling from blog to blog, from post to post.
Knocking on the doors of OSINT via Yandex and Google in order to find « Daniël Romein » led nowhere; most of the entries were linked to Bellingcat. However, the Dutch search engine Geneanet proposed the variant « Romein / Romijn ». The entry « Daniel Romijn » generated almost 2 million results. Using the combination « Romein Romijn », Commissioner Hasard found a broken link which it was possible to reconnect with the Wayback Machine: on the page Pink Floyd Fans Nederlands, the Floydian author Theo wrote about the musician « Danyo Romijn (keyboards, guitar, Hammond) », whom he named, a few lines further on in the same message, as « Danyo Romein ». Research into the meaning and origins of the name reveals that « Danyo » is the German variant of Daniel.
Searching for « Daniël Romein »From the rare publications in the Dutch media on « Daniël Romein », we note that he
has been working for Bellingcat since November 2014, is Dutch, is an IT specialist, works in an office during the day, speaks fluent Russian and has skills in photography.
Answer 1: Daniël Romein, Danyo Romijn and computer science
The search using « Daniël Romein » and « IT » gave no results; « Danyo Romijn », associated with « IT » hit the spot on Linkedin. On that site, a certain « Danyo Romijn » from The Hague introduces himself as an « IT expert in the management of applications, and developer of software ». After having studied computer science at the Den Haag University of Applied Sciences (from 1988 to 1995), he worked from February to September 1996 as a developer of software at the Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties (Minister of the Interior and Relations of the Kingdom - BZK) before being transferred to the Immigratie - en Naturalisatiedienst (Immigration and Naturalisation Service - IND). As from May 1997, he pursued his activities in the IT sector as a developer of software and Web applications from April 2010 to November 2016 as a specialist in IT applications in the province of Zuid-Holland. In November 2016, he changed direction and joined the team of the POSG Den Haag project, provider of services for Work and Careers. Danyo Romijn’s profile on Contactout.com identifies him as a specialist in IT technologies, a regional coordinator in the province of Zuid-Holland, and a member of the Tibet Support Group; on contactout.com one can also find a fragment of his email address - d****[email protected].
Answer 2: « Danyo Romijn » and « Photography »
A search using a combination of « Danyo Romijn » and « Photografie » revealed another match.
Beeldbank Haags Gemeentearchief not only proposes photos by « Danyo Romijn », with all sorts of views of the street, but also his complete electronic address: d****@gmail.com (which we shall not reveal here). In Europeana’s online collection, you can also see 152 photos by « Danyo Romijn ».
Answer 3: « Danyo Romijn » and « MH17 »
The search for « Danyo Romijn » combined with « MH17 » provided a break-through. From Monday 4 to Wednesday 6 August 2014, a user named « Danyo Romijn » published a total of 14 contributions concerning his own enquiries about the catastrophe of MH17 on the English-language discussion forum Niqnaq. He posted links to photos from the Russian and Ukrainian medias, and described his research on a multi-lingual Russian social network, Vkontakte.ru, on DNR Press, on the page of the Ukrainian Intelligence services, on the page of the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, concluding that the « rebels » of Donetsk, who had stolen the BUK-M1 missile system on 29 June 2014, could have used it to shoot down the plane. He also deduced that the shape of the « impact holes » in the cockpit could have been made by a BUK-M1, but at this moment formulated no direct incriminations. In short, he had looked into this affair extensively at that time; far more than an average consumer who wishes only to inform himself. This « Danyo Romijn », we may now affirm with a probability close to certainty, had researched the matter in full knowledge of the facts.
Question of the enquiry: Is Danyo Romijn, the user who had signed on to Niqnaq, really identical to the Dutch IT specialist « Danjo Romijn »?
Result of the enquiry : « An IP address is an address on the IT networks, which, like the Internet, is based on Internet protocol. It is given to the computers which are connected to the network, rendering them addressable and thus accessible », indicates Wikipedia. From the United Kingdom, the author received the information that user « Danyo Romijn » had connected to Niqnaq with the IP address 213.86.41.20 and the email address d****[email protected], which had already been attributed to Dutch user Danyo Romijn. This IP denomination belongs in turn to a « composite » IP - IP 213.86.41.16 à 213.86.41.23 – of du NET-NL-PROVINCIE-ZUID-HOLLAND.
Intermediate result: The Danyo Romijn who really exists had apparently used his name and his electronic address in August 2014 on the Niqnaq forum during a discussion on the catastrophe of Flight MH17.
Question of the enquiry: Is the Danyo Romijn who really exists the same Daniel Romein who works for Bellingcat?
Result of the enquiry: On the English-language discussion forum Websleuths, at 2.22 p.m. on 2 November 2014 (the post had been erased, but was able to be « resuscitated » by the author), a commentator named « danyoromijn » appeared and added a single post during the discussion on the affair of Flight MH17 : « Hi everyone, this is my first post on this subject on Websleuths, but I’ve been here since 17 July, and I’ve read everything about Bellingcat here and on numerous other sites, including sites in Ukrainian and Russian (I can read a little Russian - Google Translate is my friend). I went to Ukraine and to Russia (in Ukraine recently, I mean two years ago, and to Russia fourteen years ago), which helps me to understand things a little better. I’m surprised that there are only 16 pages on Websleuths when there is so much information we could share … Well, since it’s so complex, I haven’t yet published anything about MH17, but now I have some information which I’d like to share with Bellingcat… ».
This user « danyoromijn » also reveals personal information. First of all, he speaks a little Russian. Secondly, the Danyo Romijn who really exists, as claimed by « danyoromijn » on Websleuths, went to Moscow, the capital of Russia, in 2000, and two years later, to Ukraine, where he visited Kiev, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, Lviv, Chernivtsi, Ternopil, Volhynia, the Zakarpattia Oblast, and Rivne. To sum up – so far, Romijn has visited more than 50 countries, including Belarus in 2004, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia in 2008 and also the United Kingdom in 2015, the home of the « chief expert » for Bellingcats, Eliot Higgins.
A reminder - on 2 November 2014, « danyoromijn » posted on Websleuths that he would like to share some information with Bellingcats. We remember the comments by Modderkolk and Lanting from De Volkskrant, who, in February 2016, described the « work » of Daniel Romein, a member of Bellingcat, in the following terms - « He examines the photos taken by the Russian military forces on Vkontakte, and thus gets to know the region and the Russian military presence. He gleans his topographical knowledge mainly from Google and its Russian equivalent Yandex. In order to collect more photos, he watches the amateur images taken from Dashcams, cameras which film the road as people drive. For hours, he walks back and forth in his room, as if he were journeying to the other side of the frontier between Russia and Ukraine ».
Then - « In November 2014, he sent the summary to the British founder of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, who thanked him warmly in return. Two weeks later, he received another email from Higgins. Romein said - « He was impressed when I wanted to do more ». Which he did. There was a flurry of exchanges by e-mail, and Higgins asked Romein if he wanted to join the group. Romein had difficulty in understanding the meaning of that. There was no selection committee, he was not asked to send a letter or even undergo a telephone interview. He met no-one. He had never even shaken Higgins’ hand. In fact, nothing changed. Well, he has access to Bellingcat’s « i-channels » - an information platform where members of Bellingcat send one another messages, which are coded. Roman therefore became the seventh member of Bellingcat » .
Initial meeting and communication with Danyo RomijnAt the end of February and the beginning of March, the author contacted Danyo Romijn – the two electronic addresses d***[email protected] and i**[email protected] turned out to be active - and invited him to answer the following questions:
Author: « Do you have a degree or any training in digital criminalistics and / or digital criminalistics for the study of images? Do you consider yourself an expert in criminal investigations? Do you know how to carry out legal and criminal investigations? »
Since Romijn threatened the author with prosecution, I am only able to quote his replies from memory. After three requests by email, Romijn replied - « I’m sorry, you’re confusing me with someone else. I have nothing to do with Flight MH17 ».
Author: « I am not confusing you with anyone. I followed your previous IP 213.86.41.20 (NET-NL-PROVINCIE-ZUID-HOLLAND). You used it for your communications concerning MH17. We should talk. »
Romijn’s repose, quoted from memory: « My previous job was indeed in the Provincie Zuid-Holland. But I am absolutely certain that we never had any contact by email, and certainly not about Flight MH17. I may have sent someone an email about it, but there’s nothing strange about that. Almost everyone in Holland was talking about it. »
Author : « You’re right, we have not yet had an exchange of emails. I don’t have any emails that you wrote to anyone. I’m talking about your own lP 213.86.41.20, connected to much detailed information concerning Flight MH17 which was researched, produced and written by you a few years ago. »
Romijn’s reply from memory: « That IP address is a general IP address from my previous job, and is one of the rare IP addresses listed on line: http://www.lookip.net/whois/213.86.41.20. However, I can see no connection between that IP address and any activity by me. My ex-employer would probably not have accepted my writing long fragments of text which were not linked to my work. Whatever you want to write and publish, do not forget that the laws on the protection of personal data are very strict in Holland and Germany. and if you write anything totally stupid about me, you’ll only ridicule yourself - with the added risk that your article may be deleted. And if you break the law, if you commit a digital hack, you also risk an extra ten days in prison. Of course, you may write about my journeys, my work, and my music. I hope that a few people will order my latest CD because of your publication. Smiley. »
Author : « You were very active for a while with that IP address (also linked to one of your message accounts) in order to do your research work on Flight MH17.
Please send me a sworn declaration stating that you, Danyo Romijn, have never used the general IP address 213.86.41.20 to research, write or send information about Flight MH17. »
That was the end of my contact with Danyo Romijn. The explanation I requested never arrived, but on the contrary, he deleted his Internet page from the network, and also deleted items on numerous data portals which gave information about himself. However, the author had saved all important data before contacting Romijn.
It is remarkable to note the abundance of information that Danyo Romijn posted on the Web. On his Web site, which was emptied out and is currently « in construction », it is stated that he was born in The Hague on 14 May 1970, where he still lives, that he has a daughter named Patricia, born on 20 October 2005 in The Hague, that he has been divorced since 2009, and has the partial charge of his daughter. « My work since 1996 has been developing software and Web applications, but I also have experience in the management of application changes. I recently followed courses in project management. As well as my job, I have also participated in the development of sites ... ». Apart from Web sites, his favourite hobbies are his journeys, his music, and his photography. « As far as my journeys are concerned, I have not only travelled in Europe, but also in India, Nepal, Cuba, Aruba and Curaçao. I mostly take photographs when I’m travelling, but I also photograph nature and my daughter. I’ve been working in music for years, as a listener, but also for many years in musical groups and musical projects. Now I play music at home with synthesisers ». Then comes a list of his favourite music, his favourite films, his favourite comedies, his favourite books, his favourite drink, his favourite pet, his favourite colours and his private email address i**[email protected], Elsewhere, in the forum for Singles Wamba, he gives his height, 1.83m, and his weight, 90kg. He does not smoke, is a social drinker, has a regular income, and would like to meet a « girl » aged between 36 and 40, or else a woman aged between 37 and 45. The difference is not clear for the author. He also practices a Korean form of martial arts, the Taekwondo Koryo.
Danyo Romijns reveals not only all the details of his professional career on his old Web site, but also his leisures - « I also really like photography, which I usually practice on holiday, but also architecture (old buildings), nature, and of course family photos, for example of my daughter Patricia. I always think of myself as an amateur / leisure photographer, even though I have a good eye for composition ». Then he draws up a list of various types of camera which he claims are his.
We can’t confirm that this is a leisure activity, but the Single Romijn is also on the lookout for a woman. Even on this subject, the blood of an investigator courses through his veins. On the Dutch dating site Lexa.nl, he discovered « bad » things, and immediately complained: the names of the women who flirted with him are specifically « always constructed the same way: myszka_a_450, alinda_a_228, butterfly_a_723, karina_b_242, maymay_a_744 , sandra_a_179, monika_c_221, primavera_a_824 and jolanda_a_375 ». Romijn reached his conclusions in the Bellingcat style, « These names are generated by Lexa.nl itself. I don’t like that at all, Lexa.nl really doesn’t need them, there are enough real members, so why create false profiles?? ». Lexa.nl vehemently rejected the « investigations » by Danyo Romijn.
Music is his other passion. He began playing the piano at a young age. At 18, he was interested in hard rock and heavy metal. He played guitar in a metal group called Eclipse, then keyboards and guitar in Pink Project, a Dutch Pink Floyd tribute band. In 1995, he joined the group Nangyala, and in 1997, recorded an album of synthesiser music called Void. Danyo Romijn, alias Danyo Romein, as he was also called by the Floydian Theo, is thus a fan of the British singer, bassist, composer, wordsmith and music producer Roger Waters, the singer of Pink Floyd - the ferocious critic of the White Helmets in Syria – the best friends of Bellngcat? If that does not constitute a conflict of interests!
- Since the highly experienced experts from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, Holland and Ukraine, who make up the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), were unable to find proof of Russian responsibility for the catastrophe, they rallied to the conclusions of Daniël Romein and the Bellingcat site: i.e. that the plane was brought down by a missile made in Russia – a strange conclusion which does not correspond to the débris of the aircraft.
I shall leave the question of whether the Daniël Romein of Bellingcat is the Danyo Romijn investigated by the author to be answered by the reader. But if you should ask my opinion, I would estimate the probability as being close to 100%.
For me, as an ex-professional investigator, there is another question that needs to be asked: in what sort of pitiful state are the investigation teams led by the Dutch authorities and the Joint Investigation Team - to the point that they adopt the do-it-yourself enquiries of an amateur?
Concerning the catastrophe of Flight MH17, we have published the conclusions of the enquiry by Ivan A. Andrievskii, first Vice-President of the Russian Union of Engineers : “Analysis of the reasons for the crash of flight MH17”, by Ivan A. Andrievskii, Оdnako (Russia) , Voltaire Network, 27 September 2014.
Jürgen Cain KülbelTranslation
Pete Kimberley
- By Gus Leonisky at 6 Apr 2019 - 4:41am
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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putin did not do it...
See:
http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/28830
http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/29389
The downing of Malaysia Airlines MH17 (as observed from Australia) – Part 1
The downing of Malaysia Airlines MH17 – Part 2: An avalanche of inconvenient questions
and all the other exposés by Dr George Venturini till:
The downing of Malaysia Airlines MH17 – Part 12
fuckbook googlespeak eliminates the inconvenient truth...
Facebook Censoring OffG’s Links
OffG Editor
One of our readers recently brought something rather alarming to our attention via Facebook. It seems that certain of our articles, when shared, are not visible to anyone but the person who shared them. He sent us these examples:
Apparently, our content goes against Facebook’s “community standards”. These are long, and rambling, but we can assume they’re referring to this section:
Even more worryingly, when he tried to click these links he was presented with this:
Facebook won’t let him visit our site, not even from a link he himself shared.
Facebook are claiming to “empower people to chose for themselves”, whilst actually totally removing this choice from people’s lives. Very bizarre. Quite frightening.
Further, upon getting this news we checked out our social media set up and found that our articles no longer share to facebook. The set-up has always been that freshly published articles automatically share to Facebook – where we have thousands of followers, many of whom may only have access to OffG from that platform. That no longer happens.
An interesting fact in this case: all the links Tom attempted to share were regarding Ukraine and/or MH17.
Just last month Facebook announced they were hiring Kateryna Kruk as their “public policy manager for Ukraine”, saying her job will mainly involve “combatting Russian disinformation”.
For those of you who don’t know, Kruk (pronounced “crook”?), is a Ukrainian “political activist”, “analyst” and “social media journalist”. She rose to prominence in 2013 when, fresh out of the Soros-funded Central European University, she started tweeting about the Maidan. She tweeted so well that, one year later, the Atlantic Council gave her a prize for it.
Since then she has written for many outlets – including the Atlantic Council and The Guardian – gone on to work for the new coup-government of Ukraine in several minor administrative positions, and been given a fellowship by the European Values think tank.
She also openly celebrated the Odessa Massacre.
Oh and she works for StopFake too, who have form when it comes to objecting to our existence.
Interesting coincidence.
We encourage all of our readers, who are on Facebook, to investigate this. Is it only certain topics and links? Is it all of our articles? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments below, or contact us by email or through social media…but probably not Facebook.
Read more:
https://off-guardian.org/2019/06/04/facebook-censoring-offgs-links/
READ FROM TOP.
While most of the US and European disinformation — usually concocted in the bowels of the CIA, such as that of the war on Saddam — is infantile and can be unpicked like a badly sewn Monkeynian garment, the information by sites such as Wikileaks, the Voltaire Network and OffGuardian (OffG on most subjects) is far more researched, sourced from ORIGINAL documents and accurate. Though they push the Russian views with vigour, news outlet like RT and Sputnik are also far more spot on than the WashPost and the NYT.
The Murdoch media and the Soros media are full organs of disinformation on many subjects.
But our bourgeois masters (see de verwoeste stad... in the dollar dollop...) know that most of us still believe in Christmas, so what's the point for them to concoct proper political news? (Ah.. that cheap trinket... in a royal fool...)
See also: first they came for the socialists... in imprisoning einstein for telling the truth...
This problem encountered on Facebook is also happenning on Google. Searches have become more "limited" and usually start with paid link or links that discreetly support the capitalist narrative.
Please revisit: https://www.voltairenet.org/article185484.html
a tragedy for many and for all of us...
These children and their granddad became a symbol of a senseless act of war, killed when MH17 was shot down. For the first time, their parents reveal how they found hope and meaning in the five years since the tragedy.
Read more and see the show...
Note: Russia was not involved in this tragedy. READ FROM TOP.
Picture below by Gus Leonisky:
Condolences...
quaking in their boots...
Investigators probing the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet in eastern Ukraine in 2014 will present new evidence later on Wednesday.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is expected to name suspects and announce charges for the first time.
Flight MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down, killing all 298 on board.
Investigators blame Russian-backed separatists who they say targeted the plane with a Russian-made missile.
The Boeing 777 crashed in rebel-held eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, at the height of the conflict between government troops and separatists.
Russia has denied any involvement and has maintained the missile was fired from Ukrainian-held territory.
Dutch investigators will hold a press conference at 13:00 local time (11:00 GMT) on Wednesday after briefing relatives of victims.
What will investigators say?The JIT, which seeks to try the suspects under Dutch law, has previously said it had a "long list" of persons of interest and appealed for witness help.
On Friday, prosecutors announced the release of new findings, prompting widespread reports in Dutch media that suspects will be named.
Kateryna Zelenko, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's foreign ministry, told the Unian news agency on Tuesday that "as early as tomorrow the world will hear the names of the first four people suspected of involvement".
Ms Zelenko said Dutch prosecutors would then file the case in a Netherlands court.
"The guilt of the four suspects must be proved first and foremost in court," the spokeswoman added.
Internet open source investigators Bellingcat are also due to release a new report into the crash.
The Bellingcat team has already identified individuals it alleges may have been involved in the attack, including a military intelligence colonel in the rebel-held Donetsk area known as Khmuryi (gloomy), and a military intelligence official commanding Russian-backed separatists in Luhansk who went by the codename of Orion.
- What we know on the downing of MH17
- Bellingcat: The website behind the Skripal revelation
- Who were the victims of MH17 crash?
- Dead remembered amid tears and sunflowers
What is known about the crash?MH17 left Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at 10:15 GMT on 17 July 2014 and was due to arrive at Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia the following day.
About four hours after take-off, the plane lost contact with air traffic control about 50km (30 miles) from the Russia-Ukraine border.
Read more:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48685584
Read from top.
"obviously"....
Dutch Prosecutors have finally – five years later – named the first suspects in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over the Donbass region of Ukraine in July 2014.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, they are Russian.
Well, three Russians and one Ukrainian.
The announcement was made by Dutch prosecutors at a press conference this afternoon (Wed 19th). The names are Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, Oleg Pulatov and Leonid Kharchenko. All four have been involved in fighting for the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine since the coup government launched their assault on the region in 2014.
All four are also – allegedly – either ex-Russian soldiers or ex-intelligence operatives. But as we have seen with the Skripal case, and various other incidents in recent years, the mainstream media play pretty fast and loose with accusations of “Russian spy”.
Most telling, perhaps, is the fact that, though all four are Russian or associated with Russia, none are actually officially affiliated with the Russian government or Russian military. Considering the accusations that have been flying around since the incident occurred, this could be considered a cautious first official charge, or even a form of climbdown. A token charge, to refresh the anti-Russia sentiment and distract from other issues.
The charges themselves are largely moot, seeing as the Russian constitution forbids the extradition of Russian citizens. There will be no trial at which the accused are present, meaning the Dutch prosecutor – if they choose to proceed – will have to try the men in absentia, or hold a ludicrous “inquiry” that mirrors the Litvinenko farce the UK held in 2015.
Within 2 hours The Guardian had 3 stories dedicated to it – including one each by inveterate anti-Russia propagandists Luke Harding and Shaun Walker. This is very speedy writing.
Considering the verbiage dedicated to this subject it is remarkable what information they neglected to include:
So, the questions become:
Read more:
https://off-guardian.org/2019/06/19/discuss-mh17-suspects-named/
Another "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction" invention.
The point would be "How did they do it by shooting the plane from another plane" as it is 99 per cent the most possible scenario rather than use a rocket from the ground which was NEVER SEEN... by anybody, not even recorded on radars?
Luke Harding at the Guardian is a fabulator with exclusive connections to the fairies at the bottom of the garden of Belling-cat that has as much credibility as a toadstool with blue spots.
see how it's done...
In a very loony article by Jonathan Marcus, the respectable Beeb tells us, without fear or favour, but PLENTY OF ASSUMPTIONS and much of it WITHOUT PROOFS bedtime stories on the Skripals and MH17... Yes, Russia is guilty of everything except for Khashoggi's murder, done by our friends, the Saudis... But who can we put in prison for all these despicable murders?
See this is how it's done:
Comment about all the cases as if all of them were open and shut case. We have the proofs for the Khashoggi's murder, as supplied by the Turks, but we have NO PROOFS for the others, MH17 or the Skripals. NONE. ZERO. NADA.
With the Skripals, we only have the words of MI(add your favourite number 5, 7, 6) or a Cat that "biels" with amateurish disinformation, contradictory hospital records and people who have disappeared from the landscape despite being alive after having been hit with the most dangerous poison on earth that kills in second, by frying the brain, etc... No proofs. No motive. no bodies...
In regard to MH17, there is no proofs either. NO MISSILE, just an old fuel reservoir of an old Russian made rocket (it's written on it : proudly made in Ruskyland) presented to the public about 3 years after the event. Yoopiee!
So, who can we put in prison for all these despicable murders? My first option, would be to bring Blair, Bush and Howard in front of the international tribunal. This would be easy because we KNOW WHERE THEY LIVE — and we KNOW THEY DID IT. What did they do? They lied about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. The entire network of the five eyes "intelligence" agencies were briefed to lie by their governments. And they went to war illegally. RESULT: at least 200,000 people killed according to the military record that does not count the dead civilians and more than one million dead according to the morgues... PLUS about 4 million people displaced — and some atrocious actions such as in Fallujah where WHITE PHOSPHORUS BOMBS were used...
So Proofs? Read:
http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/11276
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sorry, what hard faces?...
O'Brien's parents John and Meryn, who live in Sydney's south-west, admitted seeing the men identified was gut-wrenching.
"I thought, what hard faces of people who could commit this sort of act and completely disregard it," Mr O'Brien said.
"I also looked at the faces of the average soldiers from that brigade and wondered if any of them were remorseful for the role they played."
The Boeing 777 was travelling over an area in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russia separatists when it was struck by a BUK surface-to-air missile.
Chief prosecutor Fred Westerbeke claimed the four suspects were responsible for bringing the missile launcher into the area it was used to shoot down the flight.
Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-20/mh17-murder-charge-announcement-p...
Hey, they haven't been "judged" nor "proven to be the people who did it"... At this stage, I know some very nice guys, who look like murderers on their passport photograph. This is not an admission of guilt, nor is it an admission they are the culprit. This is an assumption by an investigation that has hidden and fudged a lot of its "deliberations" while using unreliable information from a Bellingcat organisation designed to plant disinformation in the media. So far there is not a skerrick of proof on who did it AND HOW THEY DID IT.
SEE THE FACES of US chopper pilots laughing all the way after having bombed kids in Mosul... I know it's a contrast with serious Ruskies, so hold your bile, please...
Russia called regrettable the “absolutely baseless” accusations made by the international investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which said the Russian military was involved in the incident.On Wednesday, the Dutch-led Joint Investigations Team (JIT) accused three Russians nationals and a Ukrainian of playing a significant role in the downing of MH17 over Ukraine in 2014. All 298 people onboard died back then.
The JIT said the individuals, who were fighting on the side of the rebel forces in eastern Ukraine, received a Buk surface-to-air missile from Russia, possibly provided by the Russian military. The Russian foreign ministry said such accusations “deserve only regret.”
On top of that, the allegations were not backed up by reliable evidence and followed a “not quite coherent” line of argument. At the same time, the ministry maintains, JIT still opts to ignore information provided by Moscow.
Read more:
https://www.rt.com/news/462224-russia-response-jit-mh17-report/
simon tells fallacied fairy tales again...
The past week threw up glaring examples of how leaders lie – cynically, shamelessly and routinely. After a meticulous inquiry, international investigators announced three Russians and a Ukrainian will face murder charges over a ground-to-air missile attack in eastern Ukraine in 2014 that brought down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, killing 298 people.
The evidence tying these individuals to Vladimir Putin’s government is overwhelming, based on witness testimony, satellite images and intercepted phone calls to Moscow. The Buk missile launcher used in the attack has been tracked from its base in Kursk to Ukraine and back again. All three Russians worked for their country’s security apparatus. It’s a safe bet they did not act alone.
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/22/age-of-the-shameless-lie-m...
Crap. Sure we know that Riyadh lied about the Khashoggi murder... Or did it? No, the only thing we do not know is at what level has the crown Prince been involved.
We know that trump editorialised about the Mueller report, which itself editorialised on the Russian involvement or not in the 2016 US presidential elections. At this level, the main problem for the Democrats is should they choose to impeach Trump for whatever, it is likely to expose that the Obama administration lied to create some info to discredit Trump. Had the FBI explored the DNC computers for possible leaks, we might have found the source of the Wikileaks information. But the FBI chose not to. It was easier to blame the Ruskies with flimsy "evidence" which are no more but hear-say in the style of "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction".
As far as the MH17 is concerned, there is not a single proof placed on the table. And Russia shooting down an airliner makes no sense at all, as much as there is no proof. Most of the information has come from fantasists and idiots who fit the narrative we wish. But it's crap.
One can see that Simon is hell-bent on making a substandard subprime package, mixing half-truth, lies and porkies, like the bankers of the Lehmann brothers...
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russia had nothing to do with it...
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Kremlin confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin, at the G20 summit, briefly discussed with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte the 2014 crash of the MH17 flight in Ukraine.
"I can confirm this conversation, it was a very brief conversation on the go, on the sidelines. In addition to the prime minister of the Netherlands, Putin had such conversations with almost all the participants of the summit. Indeed, the issue of the president’s position and the position of the Russian side was raised", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
According to Peskov, it is hardly possible to perceive an investigation, which is carried out without the participation of the Russian Federation.
On 1 July, Dutch media reported that Rutte discussed with Putin at the G20 summit in Japan's Osaka the MH17 crash in Ukraine.
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was downed over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, amid a military conflict in the county caused by a violent coup d’état in Kiev. All 298 passengers of the aircraft, predominantly Dutch and Malaysian nationals, died in the crash.
Almost immediately after the incident, the US and its European allies claimed without presenting any evidence that Russia was responsible for the tragedy. These allegations were used by Washington and Brussels as a pretext to introduce sanctions against Moscow, while Russia repeatedly denied the accusations.
A Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT), formed soon after the crash, invited Ukraine, Belgium, and Australia to join the probe, but excluded Russia from the probe.
Read more:
https://sputniknews.com/russia/201907031076132809-kremlin-confirms-putin...
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the truth runs against the investigation...
The truth about Flight MH17 disaster over Ukraine will never be unveiled
Czech political scientist Marek Kyncl said in an interview with ParlamentníListy.cz website that the work of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) had nothing to do with professional criminological work.
Speaking about the investigation into the crash of Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines over Ukraine in 2014, Marek Kyncl pointed out a few curious details. First of all, the serial number of the missile, which shot down the Boeing, indicated that the missile had been delivered to the military unit located on the territory of Ukraine. This is evidenced in the documents provided by the Russian side.
Secondly, important witnesses to the case have never been interrogated. Some of them have either disappeared or died. Kyncl refers to Ukrainian flight dispatcher Anna Petrenko, who changed the course of the aircraft over the area where the hostilities took place. Shortly after the disaster, she went on an unpaid leave and disappeared without a trace. The air traffic data obtained by Ukrainian radar stations, as well as audio recordings of conversations between flight control officers had been kept secret, the expert said.
Another important witness to the case is Colonel Ruslan Grinchak, the commander of the 164th radio-technical brigade that was operating in the area of the crash. Grinchak has not been interrogated either. According to Kyncl, this officer could provide important information about the tragedy, because during the Ukrainian Air Force exercise in Odessa in 2016, he said that one could shoot down "another Malaysian Boeing."
Another important witness is Vladislav Voloshin, a pilot and then deputy general director of the Nikolaev Airport. Voloshin flew a fighter jet to patrol the area where the Boeing was shot down. Voloshin reportedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest, Kyncl noted.
Thirdly, the Americans did not provide any satellite photos even though there was a US satellite in the area of the crash site. To crown it all, photo and video materials that can be found on youtube.com, as well as materials provided by non-governmental organizations, such as the Bellingcat Investigative Journalist Group, cannot be considered as evidence for the trial, the Czech expert believes.
As for the suspects, whose names the JIT has recently announced, Marek Kyncl says that Igor Girkin-Strelkov at that time was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the People's Republic of Donetsk, while Sergei Dubinsky was in charge of its intelligence service. Leonid Kharchenko served as an intelligence officer of the People's Republic of Donetsk and was a direct subordinate to Sergei Dubinsky. None of the suspects could work as air defense system operator. They could technically give an order to shoot down the aircraft, but it was not them, who launched the missile, the Czech political scientist noted.
In his opinion, there is no reason, for which militants should be interested in the crash of a civilian aircraft. "The reasons, for which these people will be judged, will have little to do with the crash of the plane," Kyncl said. "The real culprits, as well as the cause of this crime, will most likely remain secret," Marek Kyncl said.
Читайте больше на http://www.pravdareport.com/world/142530-mh17/
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"confusing"? he did not do it....
The only man held in jail and connected to the MH17 atrocity has been released from custody in Ukraine in what is widely believed to be part of a prisoner swap deal with Moscow.
Key points:Vladimir Borisovich Tsemakh had been snatched in June by Ukrainian special forces from Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine after he was identified as a former separatist commander and a key witness to the shooting down of MH17 in 2014.
He had boasted on video of running a separatist anti-air brigade in eastern Ukraine at the time. Ukrainian prosecutors charged him with terrorism offences.
...
Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared soon after Mr Tsemakh's release at an economic forum and confirmed the two countries were finalising the details of a "large" prisoner swap.
Silene Frederiksz, whose 23-year-old son Bryce was on the downed airliner, told the ABC Mr Tsemakh's release was "confusing".
"It's a shock," she said.
"This is something we didn't expect at all and I don't know what to think of it."
"He's a key witness anyway, and the one and only in custody until now.
"We want to know what happened and how this could happen. And he can give answers, maybe all of them."
Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-06/mh17-key-witness-released-from-cu...
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investigation now focusing on ukraine...
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Lawmakers of the Dutch parliament have required that the government launch a further investigation into the role of Kiev in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine, focusing on the Ukraine's refusal to close the airspace despite ongoing hostilities in the area, according to a motion published by the parliament.
The issue was debated by the Dutch lawmakers on Monday evening and the motion was supported by all parties that took part in the discussion.
"The importance of a full fact-finding investigation into the closure of airspace above eastern Ukraine is about more than just state liability," Chris van Dam, a member of the Christian Democratic Appeal, said as quoted by RTL Nieuws.
In 2015, the Dutch Safety Board ruled that there had been sufficient grounds for Ukraine to close the airspace above the conflict zone in the east of the country.
The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 crashed on 17 July, 2014 in eastern Ukraine while en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, as the region was mired in a conflict with the new government following a coup earlier that year. All 298 people aboard, mostly Dutch citizens, Malaysians and Australians, were killed.
Following the tragedy, Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics in the region blamed each other for the downing, with the latter contending that they had no military equipment that would allow them to shoot down an aircraft at that altitude.
The United States and a number of European nations, for their part, rushed to allege that Russia was responsible for the incident – a claim that was made even before an official investigation was launched.
Shortly thereafter, the Netherlands set up a Joint Investigative Team (JIT) to probe the MH17 case, but left Russia out of the process despite the latter’s consistent offers to assist in the investigation.
JIT’s probe concluded that the aircraft was downed by a Buk missile, ostensibly launched from a Russian anti-aircraft missile brigade stationed in the city of Kursk, not far from the Ukrainian border. At the same time, the Dutch-led team refused to share concrete evidence to corroborate the claims that Russia was responsible for the downing.
Moscow has repeatedly denied the JIT's accusations, saying that the claims were unfounded and the investigation was biased. The Russian side has also emphasised that after being denied access to the formal probe, Moscow had carried out its own investigation, which concluded that it was an older version of the missile made in 1986 and belonging to Ukraine that downed the ill-fated plane. Dutch investigators, however, ignored the information.
In September, an alleged witness and potential suspect in the case of the Flight MH17 downing, Vladimir Tsemakh, returned from Ukraine to Russia under the Moscow-Kiev agreement on simultaneous detainee release. Tsemakh was the ex-commander of an air defense unit in the city of Snezhnoye, controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, at the time when the MH17 flight was downed.
On Monday, a spokesperson for the Dutch embassy in Moscow, said that the Dutch Prosecutor's Office had asked the colleagues from Russia to provide legal assistance to question Tsemakh as part of the investigation.
Read more:
https://sputniknews.com/world/201910021076942419-dutch-lawmakers-require...
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the data we have...
...
Moscow is also prepared to hand over "the data we have" to its Dutch counterparts, ahead of a court trial that will look at the evidence collected by the Netherlands-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in March next year, Chizhov said.
The envoy spoke shortly after Stef Blok, the foreign minister of the Netherlands, said Russia's contribution is needed to find some missing facts about the crash, which killed 298 passengers and crew. The Hague had "asked the Russian Federation to cooperate in a factual investigation into the closing of airspace above and around Ukraine," Blok wrote to Dutch lawmakers on Sunday.
Blok's letter comes two months after Chris van Dam, spokesman for the MH17 probe, announced the inquiry will focus on why Ukraine's airspace "was not closed" over Donetsk at the time of intense hostilities between the government military and rebel forces in the breakaway Donbass region.
Back in 2015, a report released by the Dutch Safety Board confirmed that, while it was hard to find out who was behind downing of flight MH17, the airspace over Ukraine should have been closed. Meanwhile, lawyers representing some victims of the crash maintain that it was Ukraine's responsibility to ensure the safety of civilian air traffic during the fighting.
Read more:
https://www.rt.com/news/476654-russia-help-mn17-probe/
My advice to the Russians would be to make sure the JIT does not bend the data, to yet again blame Russia for the deed...
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the reality behind MH17...
Some Emerging Truths About Ukraine and the Crash of MH 17
On 17 July 2014 a Malaysian Airlines flight was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over Ukrainian territory with the loss of all passengers and crew. The majority of the passengers were Dutch citizens, although there were significant other nationals represented, including in particular Australian citizens and residents.
The Ukrainian territory over which the tragedy occurred was the centre of fighting between its largely Russian speaking inhabitants and Kiev government forces, acting on the instructions of the Kiev government that had earlier that year seized power in an American financed coup.
An international group of countries set up an investigation into the crash. An early indicator that the investigation was likely to be less than objective came from its membership: the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine. As the countries suffering the largest casualties, the presence of The Netherlands and Australia was understandable.
There was no obvious reason for including Belgium, although that countries position as NATO headquarters provides at least one clue. Why Ukraine was included was also a puzzle. On the then known facts, or at least what was thought to be the facts, Ukraine was at the very least a prime suspect in the shooting down. The exclusion of Malaysia, the plane’s owner and operator, who also lost citizens, was at the time inexplicable. The reasons only became known much later. Malaysia refused to be a party to an extraordinary agreement between the other four nations that gave an effective veto to the Ukrainians against any adverse findings.
Contrary to basic principles of investigation, the quartet of countries immediately blamed Russia, alleging that a Russian missile has been fired at the plane, causing its destruction and the death of all on board. Not then and never since has any remotely plausible argument been advanced as to what possible motive Russia could have for shooting down the civilian airliner of a friendly country.
In the now more than five- and one-half years since the tragedy, the original blame game has not ceased. A new report has recently been released however, that has shed considerable light on what really happened. This report follows earlier revelations from the Malaysians that they had sent a team to the Ukraine to recover the plane’s black boxes, managing to do so with the assistance of local rebels fighting the Ukrainian government forces.
Had the Malaysians not been successful, establishing the truth of what happened would have been much more difficult. Thanks also to the efforts of an independent Dutch group, a great deal more information has become available, none of which casts the original quartet of countries in a favourable light.
The conduct of the inquiry, the evidence that was established and then suppressed by the original investigators, the allegations repeated without question in the western media, and the manifestly false allegations have now been revealed in a major study by an independent Dutch group led by the investigative journalist Max van der Werff. Their results can be read on the website www.maxfromthewharf.com 26 February 2020.
1
That this report, with its devastating revelations, has not been reported in the western mainstream media confirms that rather than being an inquiry into the truth about a tragedy, the investigation always had as a primary objective, to blame Russia.
It will be recalled that the allegations against Russia hinge on the alleged presence of a Russian missile system in the crash location on the relevant date. This allegation was actively promoted by the notorious mouthpiece of the United Kingdom security services who publishes under the nom de plume Bellingcat.
Bellingcat was a major promoter of the version of events that a Russian missile crew had crossed the border from Russia into Ukraine, and then fired its missile with the devastating consequences of destroying the aircraft and killing all its passengers and crew, and then returning across the border back into Russia.
Bellingcat published some photographs of the Russian missile system, and the western mainstream media duly reported the allegations that the photographs were of the offending missile system, without the least bit of fact checking, either with local citizens who would have witnessed the alleged movements of such a conspicuous weapon system, or any verifiable military records. It is now known that local eye witnesses were interviewed by the Dutch investigators.
Those eye witnesses referred to seeing Ukrainian fighter jets operating in the sky at the relevant time. This directly contradicted the Ukrainian government claim that none of their fighter jets were operational on that day. Such an obvious and easily disproven lie raises questions about what else the Ukrainians may be lying about.
As might be expected, the Dutch Military Intelligence Service carried out its investigation into the circumstances surrounding the crash. Their investigation produced a report that has been leaked to the van der Werff investigation team. That data shows quite clearly that at the material time the flight path of MH 17 was outside the operational range of both Ukrainian and Russian missile systems.
The report of the Dutch military investigation team (MIVD) quoted by van der Werff confirms that there were no Russian BUK missiles or radar systems in Ukraine on or about 17 July 2014. The Dutch report further confirmed that no BUK missiles were detected as having been fired on that day. Nor had anything been fired from the Russian side of the border.
This information was consistent with data obtained by two Australian investigators, Shaun Ellis and Timothy Johns, conducting an inquiry under the code name “Operation Arkanella”. None of these findings, which clearly contradict the allegations of Russian responsibility, have ever been published in the western mainstream media. It raises the obvious question of why the lie of Russian complicity in the tragedy has been raised and maintained ever since, when it is clearly contradicted by the evidence the Dutch-Australian investigations discovered.
The known Russian missile systems were in proximity to substantial population centres. There were no reports in any format of any missiles being fired on the relevant day. This conclusion is clearly reported in the official report of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service. Their report clearly states: “it becomes apparent that flight MH 17 was flying beyond the range of all identified and operational Ukrainian and Russian locations where 9K37m1Buk M1 Systems were deployed.”
2
Again, it raises the obvious question: how is this information reconciled with the propaganda attack on Russia, then and ever since?
This report was published on 21 September 2016, i.e. more than three years ago. Not a word of it has been published by the western media who persist in their “blame Russia” version despite having no verifiable evidence let alone motive, to sustain such an allegation.
If we are able to exclude a missile as the cause of MH 17’s demise, that inevitably leaves only either an accident (which may be emphatically excluded) or intervention by fighter aircraft. Even the Ukrainians and their Western allies have never alleged that a Russian fighter jet was involved.
Rather, the Ukrainian government has always maintained that none of its military aircraft were flying at the time. This claim has long been disputed by civilians living in the area who have given repeated accounts of the activity of Ukrainian fighter jets in the area at the relevant time.
The area where the shooting down of MH17 occurred was an active war zone. It is known that both United States and Russian satellites were in stationary orbit over the region at the relevant time. It raises the obvious question as to why these data have not been released. One can understand the US reluctance as the data would disclose the complicity of their ally Ukraine in the tragedy. It is less clear why the Russian authorities have not released their data. The evidence after all is in their favour.
What the satellite data would show is exactly what was established by the Dutch and Australian investigators at the time. That is, MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian fighter jets.
Van der Werff’s report includes the transcript of an interview with one such key witness, a Brigadier of the Dutch Police. That witness gave detailed evidence as to the activities of Ukrainian fighter jets in the area at the relevant time on the day of the tragedy. Again, this clearly refutes the Ukrainian claims.
When one adds together the known facts revealed in the Dutch documents as well as other sources, certain irresistible inferences can be drawn. The most obvious is that MH 17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet. That single fact, from which so much else followed, has never been reported in the mainstream media despite it being the irresistible inference drawn by Dutch investigators more than three years ago.
That the suppression of the truth has been a major factor in the anti-Russian campaign waged by the Netherlands, Australia and Ukraine is obvious. That the lies, obfuscations and misinformation should be perpetrated by the mainstream media is a sad commentary on the deplorable state of affairs that media has now sunk to.
James O’Neill
Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst [email protected]
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CIA's lies about MH17?...
CNN incidentally exposes CIA's lies about MH17 disaster
World » Americas
US journalists gave a reason to accuse the CIA of architecting major provocative operations against Russia with the help of Ukraine. The purpose was to find more "evidence" to prove that Russia was guilty of the MH17 disaster.
CNN 'exposed' CIA over new 'evidence' against Russia in MH17 caseIt goes about the interview with "former high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence officers", in which one of them claimed that the CIA partially financed the operation that Ukraine conducted to lure 33 Russian citizens detained in Belarus, to Ukraine. "Technical assistance and advice" to Ukraine from the CIA was also part of the case.
Military expert Yury Knutov, a specialist in air defense systems, told Pravda.Ru that the CIA supervises Ukraine's special services for a long time already. CIA officers, Knutov said, may take a whole floor of the building of the Security Service of Ukraine. Even if no one had written anything on the subject, it would have been clear that it was the Americans that were masterminds of the whole operation, the expert told Pravda. Ru.
According to him, covert operations got exposed at a time when the CIA and the Joe Biden administration could not figure out whom to blame for the shameful NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Noteworthy, CNN noted that the interview was recorded on the outskirts of Kiev. It appears that the information surfaced at the initiative of Ukraine, but damage to the reputation could be much more serious than that the USA had to deal with in Afghanistan.
The goal is to find more evidence against Russia in MH17 caseThe key point in the interview is the episode, when a former Ukrainian intelligence officer claimed:
"There were two (among 33 Russians — ed.) who were present when the missile that downed MH17 was launched. Four others were members of a group responsible for shooting down our military aircraft and killing at least 70 of our best men," the interview reads.
In addition, CNN states:
"One video, shared with CNN by the former military intelligence sources, captures a group of rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine holding up the wreckage of a military aircraft that the sources said had just been shot down, a crime designated as terrorism in Ukraine."
It appears that those "former military intelligence sources" had no time to share such videos with anyone else before.
In a nutshell, the entire story in the form of the interview was concocted in an attempt to establish Russia's connection with the MH17 disaster yet again. The trial in the Netherlands is coming to an end, but there is no evidence found. This is indirectly shown by two things:
- It was reported that one of the witnesses allegedly died. It will probably be revealed later that it was a key witness.
- A court appeal to residents of Kursk with a request to share information that could help the investigation.
Exposing the falsification of MH17 case will relieve Russia of sanctions and bury USA's reputationThe international Joint Investigation Team investigating the crash of the Malaysian Boeing (which includes Ukraine) announced that the Buk anti-aircraft missile system that struck the passenger airliner had been allegedly delivered from Russia. Afterwards, the air defense missile system was returned back to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade in Kursk.
In the summer of 2019, Dutch prosecutors, proceeding from this information, brought charges against three Russian citizens:
Pulatov was the only one who agreed to participate in the trial in absentia. His defense announced that prosecutors were trying "at any cost" to prove that Flight MH17 was shot down with a Buk missile, while ignoring evidence and facts pointing in a different direction. For example, the crash site had not been examined for four months, therefore, "the evidence may have been either lost or compromised," Pulatov's lawyer Boudewijn Van Eijck said.
According to the lawyer, the Security Service of Ukraine provided audio recordings of only the militia of the People's Republic of Donetsk, but provided no recordings of conversations of the Ukrainian military. In addition, virtually all the materials provided by Ukraine would be accepted by investigators as corroborating evidence, he noted, adding that the information provided by the Russian Federation would always be called misleading.
The lawyer also noted that many Ukrainian prosecutors who were investigating the MH17 case had been dismissed from their jobs.
"After the dismissal, one of the prosecutors said that he wanted to prove the guilt of the Russian side. I think that this comment clearly reflects the position of the Ukrainian side — to accuse the Russian Federation, rather than to establish the truth,” Boudewijn Van Eijck explained.
Yuri Knutov shares the opinion of the lawyer. In a comment for Pravda. Ru, he noted that he could not understand many things that the court considered and accepted as evidence."
"For example, a rocket always explodes above a target. Almaz-Antey conducted full-scale experiments: they blew up rockets from both sides above the cockpit and then showed on fragments distribution where the rocket came from. We proved that it was a Ukrainian rocket. What did Ukraine do? They took a warhead, put it on the ground, surrounded it with wooden shields, blew it up and said that it was the evidence," said Yuri Knutov.
The expert is sure that the authorities would not have dared to move the Buk system with combat missiles around Russian cities for safety reasons.
"This case is overwhelmed with falsifications from beginning to end,” Yuri Knutov clarified. According to him, the United States only needs "to provide its satellite images, where it can be seen that the rocket was launched from the Donetsk territory," but this was not done.
In March 2020, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused the Dutch authorities of putting pressure on the court. It is an open secret that it was after the MH17 disaster, when the West imposed most stringent sanctions on Russia. The blow to the image of the United States in the world would be overwhelming, should the charges prove to be fabricated. Europe will be the first to lift the sanctions.
The court is to deliver the verdict before December 15, 2022.
The Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on July 17, 2014 in the Donetsk region. All 298 people on board were killed.
Читайте больше на https://english.pravda.ru/world/148052-cnn_cia/
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MH17, the merdict....
‘Zero Possibility’ MH17 Verdict Could Have Been Anything Other Than Anti-Russia Show Trial: Analysts
The Hague sentenced two Russian nationals and one Ukrainian to life in prison in absentia on Thursday for their alleged roles in the 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner in the Donbass. Moscow slammed the ruling, accusing the court of violating the principles of impartial justice for the sake of political expediency.
Thursday’s long-awaited Hague ruling on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was a “foregone conclusion,” and the only decision to be expected from the court, given the politicized nature of the trial, and the geopolitical implications at stake, international legal experts, IR analysts and political commentators have told Sputnik.
“The verdict today was a foregone conclusion given the way the investigations were conducted, to exclude Russian testimony and without demanding that the USA share the intelligence from satellites that it said it possessed shortly after the event,” Gilbert Doctorow, an international relations analyst and specialist on Russian affairs, said.
Citing the MH17 incident as a “classic case of ‘false flag’ operations” by Kiev aimed at ramping up Western pressure against Moscow, Doctorow pointed out that unlike this week’s WW3 scare involving a Ukrainian air defense missile falling on Polish territory - which Kiev immediately blamed on Russia but the West surprisingly questioned, the US and its allies did not intervene in MH17 in 2014 to swat down Ukrainian claims.
“With MH17, the USA pointed the finger at Russia minutes after the crash, but then this was only a propaganda play in the Information Wars that had the objective of bringing Europe on board for severe sanctions against Russia. However, with the missile hitting Poland yesterday, first the Polish president and then Joe Biden said within hours that while a proper investigation was needed, the available intelligence on the trajectory of the missile excluded its being fired from Russia. Why this very different development of the case? Because there is a proxy war going on now and USA/NATO did not want an escalation to nuclear war through pushing a false flag story,” the observer suggested.
Political commentator and author Joe Quinn echoed Doctorow’s characterization of the verdict as a “foregone conclusion,” suggesting the Hague “was always going to find Russia guilty,” because that was “the premise of the investigation from the outset.”
“Russia wasn't allowed to take part because Russia was deemed guilty in advance of any investigation. In fact, within one day of the shooting down of MH17, Western media outlets were already declaring Russia guilty, with one notable UK tabloid declaring on its front page ‘Putin Killed My Baby!’ From there, the stage was set for both the Dutch Safety Board and the Joint Investigative Team to 'fix the facts around the policy' that Russian-backed separatists were to blame,” Quinn stressed.
The commentator suggested that “any sober analysis” of the JIT's findings would show that the investigation was slanted against these ‘Russian-backed separatists’ “and by extension [against] Russia,” to prove them guilty.
“To reach this conclusion they were required to avoid giving any serious credence to evidence presented by the Russian government. The JIT's final conclusions were primarily based on unnamed 'eyewitnesses' and 'insiders'. The credibility of the statements of these people has not been subject to impartial scrutiny,” Quinn said.
Asked why the US never bothered to release satellite data related to the MH17 crash which could prove Russia's innocence, the commentator emphasized that the US government “has a vested interest in withholding any and all information that would disprove” the ‘Russia did it’ thesis. “The same applies to the authorities in Kiev and Holland.”
Quinn is convinced that there was “zero possibility” for the verdict to be anything other than it was, since the destruction of MH17 was a “political event” – one “that occurred in the context of the ongoing geopolitical rivalry between Russia and the US, and more broadly 'East vs West'.”
Tiberio Graziani, chairman of Vision & Global Trends, a Rome-based geopolitical affairs think tank, expressed similar sentiments, saying that “given the current circumstances related to the crisis between the West and the Russian Federation,” Thursday’s verdict could not have been nonpolitical. “Russia was not allowed to participate in the trial in which it was directly accused, precisely because it was considered - a priori – guilty from the outset. We recall that the tragic event was used right from the start in the context of the long hybrid war that the West has waged since at least the early years of this century. Furthermore, in [this] specific case, the question of the insurance companies that will have to pay the damages must also be taken into account,” Graziani said.
‘Farce Masquerading as a Trial’
Christopher C. Black, an international criminal and human rights lawyer with over 20 years of experience covering war crimes and international relations under his belt, provided Sputnik with an in-depth account of the question marks surrounding the MH17 saga and, like his counterparts above, characterized Thursday’s verdict as the “conclusion of a farce masquerading as a trial.”
Black pointed out that from the outset, Washington and its allies blamed the Donbass republics for shooting down the passenger airliner, despite no evidence that the militias even had access to the sophisticated Buk anti-aircraft missiles allegedly used in the crime (but which Kiev did have).
“Also ignored was the eyewitness evidence of civilians on the ground who observed at least one Kiev Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jet ascend and approach the civilian airliner and that, immediately afterwards, the plane crashed. There were reports as well that a Spanish air traffic controller in Kiev, known as Carlos, sent out messages on Twitter contemporaneous with the shoot down, using the Twitter address @Spainbuca, that he observed this on his radar and overheard the pilot’s conversations with Kiev air traffic control confirming that the Ukraine jet shot down the plane. There are later reports that a Ukrainian pilot admitted he flew the plane that shot it down. Both these men have since disappeared from view. Remarkably, the investigating body has never followed up these important facts,” Black emphasized.
The observer noted that the Hague has refused to follow up on any information related to the incident provided by the Russian government, and pointed out that since the plane was downed in Donbass territory, under international law, it should have been the Donetsk People’s Republic which led the investigation into the plane’s destruction, recognition or no recognition.
“But the Donetsk Republic was denied that role by the Kiev regime which claimed it took place in Ukraine territory and so assumed the role of investigator and then, under NATO, and especially American pressure, delegated the investigation to NATO, in the guise of the Dutch Safety Board, on the justification that the majority of the passengers were Dutch,” Black said.
“Since then, what should have been an open, international and objective investigation has descended into a burlesque of deception, fraud, and cover up of mass murder by the NATO powers. For whoever brought down that plane is guilty of mass murder. Since there is persuasive and compelling evidence that it was the forces of the Kiev regime that brought it down, and since they had to have done it either with the real time connivance or later assistance of the United States and its allies, then the governments of all those countries are guilty of a crime against humanity, a war crime. The motive for this crime is unclear. It is thought by some that the Kiev regime hoped to assassinate President Putin who, it was reported, was flying through the area on a similar plane, though the Russians have not confirmed this. The only other explanation is that the Kiev regime murdered all those people in order to discredit the Russian government. Both motives would be to the benefit of NATO in its on going aggression against Russia. As to possible Russian or Donbass motives, I can think of none,” the observer said.
Black stressed that the Dutch Safety Board’s 2015 report on the incident simply ignored any evidence pointing to Kiev’s responsibility for the plane’s destruction, such as the holes found in the airliner’s fuselage which “match the 30mm cannon shells used by the Kiev Sukhoi Su-25…seen approaching the plane.”
Black also pointed to the mysterious January 2017 detention by Dutch police of a pair of journalists and the seizure of their equipment, cameras, phones, notes and interview materials on MH17, characterizing that incident as a "blatant attempt by the Dutch government to suppress the evidence these journalists gathered."
"It is only reasonable to conclude that the NATO authorities are worried in case these journalists found evidence confirming NATO culpability for the incident. After all, [they] had written an article about it and announced that they were willing to share the information with the Dutch government. But apparently there is a fear in NATO that they might share too much with too many and so pounced on them and robbed them and us of the information they had before they could. The Dutch government has yet to offer a legal justification for this seizure,” the observer said.
The Hague District Court found Russian nationals Igor Girkin (aka Igor Streklov) and Sergei Dubinsky and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko guilty in the downing of MH17, sentencing them in absentia to life in jail. The men were also ordered to pay over 16 million euros in compensation to the families of the 298 victims of the plane crash. Moscow blasted the "politicized" decision.
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 Flight MH17 went down in the eastern Donetsk People's Republic on July 17, 2014 while on route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The plane's route over the Donbass was approved by Ukrainian authorities despite the fact that Kiev forces and local militias were engaged in fierce clashes in the area. All 298 people aboard the aircraft were killed.
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https://sputniknews.com/20221117/zero-possibility-mh17-verdict-could-have-been-anything-other-than-anti-russia-show-trial-analysts-1104346493.html
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NOTE: THIS VERDICT ON MH17 COMES CONVENIENTLY TO SUPPORT "UKRAINE" IN ITS MOMENT OF PRESENT NAZI STUPIDITY.... THE FACT WAS THAT UKRAINE SHOULD HAVE CLOSED THE AIRLINE CORRIDOR ABOVE THE "WAR ZONE" OF DONETSK.... SECOND, THERE WAS NO "RECORD" OF A MISSILE BEING FIRED, UNTIL "ONE" WAS SHOWN SIX MONTH AFTER THE EVENT... A MISSILE TRAIL DOES NOT INDICATE WHICH OR WHO SHOT THE VIDEO. ANY MISSILE WILL DO. THE THEORY OF A UKRAINIAN JET SHOOTING DOWN MH17 HAS MORE LEGS THAN A BUK MISSILE. NOTE THE INCONSISTENCIES: THE BUK MISSILE UNIT SHOWN IN VIDEOS A) WAS GOING BACK TOWARDS UKRAINE AND B) WAS WITNESSED TO BE ON A DIFFERENT DATE THAN THE SHOOTING DOWN OF MH17.
STILL LA HAGUE HAS TO MAKE A DECISION 8 YEARS AFTER PAINSTAKING RECONSTRUCTION OF BULLSHIT. WE COULD BE WRONG, BUT WE HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING DISSENTING EXPERTS WITH MORE VALID ARGUMENTS THAN THE TRIBUNAL OF LA HAGUE.
SEE ALSO:
https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/38351
https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/28813
seriously?
The US might have crucial satellite photos of the missile used to bring down MH17 six years ago but the images are classified, a court has heard.
Prosecutor Thijs Berger told the District Court of The Hague the missile that downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 wasn’t detected on Russian civilian radar, but experts told investigators it might have been too small or fast.
Read more rubbish:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/06/10/us-mh17-missile-court/
The court knows very well that:
a) THE US HAVE DENIED HAVING PHOTOS OF THE MISSILE
and
b) THE RUSSIAN RADARS NOT DETECTING A MISSILE (?too small, ?too fast) is as fanciful as Santa Clauss doing wheelies with Rudolph at the north pole on December 24...
warping the truth.....
Meet the British intelligence-linked firm that warped MH17 news coverage
KIT KLARENBERG·MARCH 5, 2023
Staffed by British special forces veterans, Pilgrims’ Group quietly shaped international coverage of the MH17 disaster as it shepherded journalists to and from the crash site.
In November of 2022, a final judgment arrived in the trial of alleged perpetrators of the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members. They were ruled to have arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly stru
Oleg Pulatov, the only defendant to seek legal representation during the trial, was conversely acquitted on all charges, which prosecutors will not appeal.
The Malaysian airliner had been purportedly shot down by a missile on July 17th 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew aboard.
Heavily dependent on information supplied by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the Western government-funded “open source” investigations organization known as Bellingcat, the guilty verdicts appeared to vindicate an established narrative in which Russia and its Donbas allies were solely culpable.
But as this investigation will reveal, much of the news coverage of MH17 was heavily influenced by a shadowy entity called Pilgrims Group, which is closely tied to British intelligence.
Staffed and led by British Special Forces veterans, Pilgrims Group is a private security company offering elite security services to London’s embassies, diplomats, spies, and business interests abroad, particularly in high-risk environments. It also trains foreign militaries and paramilitary groups, and provides protection to reporters and their employers.
It was in the latter context that Pilgrims Group shaped media coverage – and by extension, official investigations – of MH17. The company had maintained a presence in Kiev since the early days of the US-orchestrated Maidan “revolution” in late 2013, shepherding journalists to and from the scenes of major events in Ukraine. In the process, it maintained control over what the reporters under its watch saw and how they understood the situations they encountered.
As such, Pilgrims Group played a pivotal role in the effort by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and British intelligence to convict Russia and the Donbas separatists for MH17’s downing. The operation began while the plane’s wreckage remained smoldering on the ground of rebel-controlled territory, and ultimately prevented the initiation of any genuinely independent investigations.
Suspiciously quick off the markBefore Malaysia Airlines publicly announced it had lost contact with MH17, Ukraine’s then-Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashenko had published its flight number, destination, passenger numbers, the manner in which it crashed, the weapon used, and blamed Russia and Donbas separatists for the catastrophe.
From that point on, the SBU began flooding the information space with materials including intercepted audio of the separatists discussing a downed plane, as well as images its agents allegedly found on social media pointing to where the allegedly Russian-sourced Buk missile had been fired. Bellingcat, which serendipitously launched just days before, immediately seized on the deluge of carefully curated information.
With impressive speed, the US and British government-funded media outfit claimed to have precisely mapped out what happened and how. Bellingcat’s findings were accepted without a shred of critical scrutiny by the Western media, lawmakers, pundits, and the MH17 tribunal, which was launched on August 7th 2014.
In the process, any explanations for MH17’s downing that did not reinforce the official narrative either vanished into the ether, or were maligned as conspiracy theory or Russian “disinformation.” One compelling counter-theory for the aerial disaster was that the plane had been used as a shield by Ukrainian fighter jets to deter ground-to-air attacks by the separatists.
There are clear precedents for such provocative tactics. In 2018, for example, the Israeli air force tricked Syrian air defenses into accidentally shooting down a Russian spy plane by using it as cover for its own fighter jets. A leaked JIT document noted Donbas separatists were convinced that authorities in Kiev were keeping eastern Ukraine’s airspace open for precisely this purpose, having conversely closed Crimea’s at the time.
Furthermore, in a video published on June 18th 2014, separatists expressed concern that Kiev was attempting to provoke an in-air incident. Three days before MH17 went down, a Ukrainian military aircraft ferrying military equipment and soldiers to the frontline was shot down over Lugansk. Multiple witnesses have testified to the presence of Ukrainian jets in the sky near MH17, while contemporary local TV reports show a Ukrainian-operated Buk missile in the vicinity.
Yet, the JIT was simply unwilling to consider evidence diverging from the established Western narrative of MH17. And as the trial proceeded, Pulatov’s defense team, independent journalists and researchers attempting to challenge the long-established narrative of Russian culpability were subjected to vicious attacks from Bellingcat’s army of online trolls.
The SBU-directed propaganda blitzkrieg that immediately followed MH17’s downing ensured that the separatists accused of the attack, and the government accused of sponsoring them, were quickly convicted in the court of international opinion. This may explain why media reaction to the November 2022 verdict was so muted. Despite the enormous, enduring global outcry provoked by the MH17 disaster, the verdict hardly registered with mainstream journalists.
Yet many of the journalists that had covered the MH17 from Ukraine had been kept under the careful watch of an organization intimately involved with the same Western governments with a stake in convicting the separatists for the disaster.
British military veterans direct Maidan news coverageBecause Pilgrims Group operates largely in the shadows, references to the company by Western news outlets are extremely rare. However, the firm is well-known to all major media outlets, boasting on its website of “significant experience of helping to facilitate safe and secure news-gathering and film-making.” Pilgrims Group also claims expertise in ensuring that “journalists and production staff can operate safely and securely” in hostile circumstances, such as “underdeveloped countries, failing states and post-disaster environments.”
The British company made headlines for its work in late 2012, after armed militants abducted a six-strong NBC News team led by the network’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, whom the company was guarding. Engel and his team were freed after five days in captivity, when a vehicle in which they were being escorted was stopped at a checkpoint run by violent extremist group Ahrar al-Sham.
This resulted in a shootout, in which two fighters who kidnapped the team were killed by Ahrar al-Sham. Initially, Engel claimed his captors were affiliated with the government of Bashar Assad, while NBC implied Ahrar al-Sham’s rescue was completely serendipitous. Subsequent investigations revealed the abductors were, in fact, affiliated with the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army, and the checkpoints had been deliberately arranged by Pilgrims Group, which praised the terrorist militia’s “brilliant job.”
Decisive interventions by Pilgrims Group elsewhere have received much less attention. On June 3rd 2014, the firm issued a little-noticed press release boasting of its reputation as “the security company of choice” for media organizations operating in Ukraine at every stage of the Maidan “political unrest,” working with “journalist teams throughout the country” during key “disturbances.”
Oddly, despite their coverage of these events presumably being very publicly disseminated across the globe, Pilgrims Group’s clients in Ukraine apparently “preferred not to be named” due to “the sensitive nature of their role.” Nonetheless, the company bragged that its teams were operational in many of the country’s “major population centres,” including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, “and throughout Crimea.”
“Pilgrims has been able to respond rapidly to broadcasters’ demands by drawing on its extensive networks to mobilise former special services personnel, who were on duty within 12 hours of the clients’ initial requests (and frequently considerably quicker). In addition, the company continues to maintain the highest level of awareness of the unfolding political situation in the Ukraine by maintaining its local contact network [emphasis added], with regular updates of information on the ground.”
Further detail on Pilgrims Group’s activities in Ukraine appears in a leaked June 2016 Foreign Office proposal to train Syrian rebel fighters in Jordan as part of the plan to overthrow the Syrian government. The company was central to the project, running “simultaneous training programmes around the world,” and therefore maintaining a “large and flexible pool” of staff who could be assigned to the mission. MH17 was cited as an example of the speed with which Pilgrims Group could mobilize its operatives.
“As a global risk management company Pilgrims are routinely required to expand their operational footprint and support tasks at short notice,” the proposal bragged. “Pilgrims supported a large number of media organisations operating in Ukraine, which peaked at 27 active security teams on the ground. When the Malaysian Airlines aircraft was shot down over Ukraine…Pilgrims generated seven additional teams within six hours [emphasis added].”
This proposal was submitted to the Foreign Office by Adam Smith International, a British intelligence cutout with an extensive history of scandal, corruption and collaboration with jihadist groups. As The Grayzone has revealed, the company also funded Bellingcat to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in the 2019-20 financial year. Both organizations have refused to reveal the purpose of this sum.
Pilgrims Group has also offered protection to Western journalists in other conflict zones. The LinkedIn profile of senior company staffer and British Army veteran Chris Bradley lists his work providing “security risk management to two award winning news teams in Ukraine (2014) and Syria (2015), including coverage of MH17,” as one of his biggest “achievements” at the firm.
Given the insidious role played by London and its assorted intelligence cutouts in shaping worldwide media coverage of the Syrian civil war, such professional history raises troubling questions about Pilgrims Group’s involvement in influencing news coverage of MH17.
A frontline player in Britain’s global information warFollowing the MH17 disaster, Western journalists flocked to the crash site while Ukraine’s State Emergency Service rushed to collect corpses. The collection work was halted after it came under fire from the Ukrainian army, however, and emergency workers left outright after Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) representatives arrived at the crime scene. But reporters under the watchful eye of Pilgrims Group stayed and continued their reporting.
Over subsequent months, as the remaining bodies rotted in the sun, OSCE monitors and pro-Russian rebels frequently left MH17’s wreckage unguarded for extended periods. It was not until November 2014 that the ground was comprehensively cleared. During that time, little would have prevented malicious actors from manipulating, removing or planting incriminating evidence at the site.
In order to operate in Ukraine, Pilgrims Group required the approval of the country’s government, as well as local security and intelligence services. Given the intense fervor with which these same actors sought to cement Kremlin culpability for MH17, Pilgrims Group’s work in managing the protection and travel of Western reporters provided a logical tool to assist this effort, as its operatives were literally able peer over the shoulders of journalists while they worked.
British spies consider MH17 key ‘disinformation’ battlegroundAnother extremely curious and thus far undisclosed component of the MH17 controversy is the clandestine role played by London’s information warriors in shaping public perceptions of the event. These operations began almost at the precise moment of the crash.
Leaked files related to the activities of Integrity Initiative, a Foreign Office black propaganda unit staffed by British military and intelligence veterans, contain countless references to battling Kremlin “narratives” around MH17. For example, one of its operatives was listed in the documents as a “continuous commentator” in the studio of LBC, one of Britain’s largest radio stations which reaches millions of listeners weekly, on the night of the incident.
In Foreign Office funding submissions in 2018, Integrity Initiative proposed organizing focus groups with select Russian and Russian-speaking audiences, who would be invited to “rebut Western analyses of key media stories (e.g. MH17, Litvinenko, Skripal, doping)” and explain why they supported “counter narratives” about these issues, which pointed away from Moscow.
The results of this effort would be shared with British intelligence agencies and members of the Initiative’s overseas “clusters” – secret networks of spooks, academics, journalists, pundits and politicians – to assist in battling these “narratives” via news outlets and social media. Notably, all Integrity Initiative’s cluster members are formally trained in the art of online trolling.
Integrity Initiative was one of several propaganda enterprises launched by a shadowy Foreign Office unit known as the Counter Disinformation and Media Development (CDMD). The unit is overseen by senior intelligence officer Andy Pryce, who personally “handles” British journalist Paul Mason and likely many other media personalities. Its stated remit is to “weaken the Russian state’s influence” in countries comprising the former Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia.
The flagship component of this multi-million pound effort is Open Information Partnership(OIP). Though OIP has posed as a grassroots endeavor to battle Kremlin “disinformation,” leaked files related to the project make abundantly clear it is, in fact, a British-sponsored “troll factory.” Through a covertly funded nexus of ‘independent’ NGOs, fact-checkers, news outlets and citizen journalists across Central and Eastern Europe, the initiative deluges the media environment with a ceaseless stream of anti-Russian propaganda.
Among OIP’s founding “partners” was Bellingcat. For the first three years of its existence, Bellingcat trained participating organizations “in open source research and social media investigation,” while “developing a cadre of organizations with a digital forensic skillset.” In the process, it raked in vast sums from the Foreign Office. Its MH17 investigation was explicitly cited as a reference point for this activity in the Partnership’s founding documents.
OIP’s network was also originally intended to include the Berlin-based “non-profit independent newsroom” Correctiv, which published multiple investigations blaming Russia for MH17. While some of this work won awards, a secret Foreign Office-funded appraisal of the outfit acknowledged its reporting on the crash “[lacked] in-depth background research and due diligence.” However, the outlet’s “excellent” public reputation made it “perhaps the most impressive” of all prospective OIP members.
To advance its anti-Russian machinations, CDMD commissioned extensive target audience analyses of the populations of Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine and the West Balkans throughout 2017. British intelligence indicated that it sought insights into citizens of these countries’ “current perception and attitude towards Russia,” especially with respect to the Kremlin’s “handling” of events such as Brexit, the Syrian crisis, and MH17.
At the same time, British cutouts like the Integrity Initiative and Pilgrims’ Group helped manage the Western public’s view of MH17 as part of a wider agenda to cultivate popular resentment of Russia.
Pilgrims’ Group manages media covering Ukraine proxy warThese same entities continue to shape Western perceptions of events in Ukraine to this day. A May 2022 “capability statement” outlining Pilgrims Group’s Eastern European footprint refers to the Russian invasion “[triggering] a rapid scaling up” of its operations in Kiev.
Pilgrims Group has provided “support networks, including logistics and equipment, to media crews covering the conflict,” and embedded “dozens” of “security consultants” in the ranks of “almost all major international news organisations” active in the country.” Strikingly, the statement adds that all Pilgrims Group security teams in Kiev boast Ukrainian “special police or MoD [Ministry of Defence] backgrounds.”
Once again, Pilgrims Group has been effectively placed in charge of where journalists can travel, what they see, and who they interview in a conflict. Yet even as it helps shape public perceptions of a Western proxy war, the company has managed to remain conveniently in the shadows.
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https://thegrayzone.com/2023/03/05/british-intelligence-firm-mh17-news/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsun8e4E4Gk
https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/belmarsh-tribunal-calls-on-albanese-to-truly-take-action-on-assanges-death-by-process/
https://progressive.international/movement/action/the-belmarsh-tribunal-sydney-7ba6e0ac-e63f-4460-986f-3af370e37046/en
MH17 again....
An email sent on November 12 2020 by an officer within Amsterdam’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) shows a Bellingcat investigation was intentionally shared with the agency prior to publication, so as to assist the Dutch spooks in shaping media strategies and messaging following its release. The revealing communication is irrefutable proof of the cozy relationship the self-styled “independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists” enjoys with Western intelligence services.
In the message, marked “high importance,” the undisclosed author explained that Bellingcat would soon publish research amounting to a deeply libelous attack on independent journalists and researchers, who challenged the mainstream narrative surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. As such, the Dutch intelligence officer wrote, “it is probably smart to put together interdepartmental wording for this already”:
“Because the article highlights several sides (MH17 but also COVID19) it is probably wise to wait a while and see if; a. the mainstream media pick it up; b. from which angle the media pick up and highlight it (MH17 or COVID); c. from this angle to determine the wording and therefore which department is in the lead; d. coordinate the language as much as possible interdepartmentally.”
A ‘bonanza’ of Western intel propagandaThe article in question, entitled “The GRU’s MH17 Disinformation Operations Part 1: The Bonanza Media Project,” was framed as an investigation into a now-defunct independent media venture named Bonanza Media which was established by Russian journalist Yana Yerlashova with the help of freelance Dutch researcher Max Van der Werff.
Much of Bonanza’s work challenged Western assertions that separatist fighters in Donbass shot down MH17 with a Buk surface-to-air missile system provided to them by the Russian military. Ukrainian officials began pushing that narrative, citing audio recordings they claimed to have intercepted alongside material purportedly found on social media implicating the separatists, even before Malaysia Airlines publicly announced it had lost contact with the plane.
Bellingcat, which serendipitously launched just days before the downing of MH17, came to prominence by immediately seizing on this deluge of carefully-curated and potentially falsified information. With amazing speed, the organization claimed to have precisely mapped out what happened that fateful day, and exactly how it occurred. Despite its relative inexperience and opaque organizational structure, its findings were accepted without a shred of scrutiny by Western journalists, lawmakers, pundits, and the official Dutch MH17 tribunal, which concluded in November 2022.
Bonanza Media’s film, “MH17 – Call for Justice”, features interviews with witnesses on-the-ground that day and Malaysian government officials who did not accept the official story, but doesn’t rule out the possibility of Russian culpability altogether. However, the documentary presented a substantial challenge to Bellingcat’s version of events – which also happened to align neatly with the official narrative. In 2020, Bonanza also published leaked documents confidentially submitted to the tribunal. This included Dutch intelligence files recording that while many Ukrainian Buk systems had been spotted in eastern Ukraine, Russian equivalents were nowhere to be seen.
Evidently, Bellingcat and its founder, Eliot Higgins, were displeased with their results. As Dutch freelance journalist Eric van de Beek wrote in 2020, “because it was impossible for Bellingcat to discredit Van der Werff on the basis of the well-researched content featured on his blog and in his recent documentary, Eliot Higgins opted to wage a campaign of misinformation.”
Bellingcat’s 2020 investigation into the group strongly insinuated Bonanza was being run by Russia’s GRU, heavily implied their investigations were edited by the agency’s operatives before publication, and suggested its contributors were on the Kremlin’s payroll. The group claimed their conclusions were “based on emails from the mailboxes of two senior GRU officers obtained by a Russian hacktivist group and independently authenticated by us.”
Strict British libel laws may have prevented the group from making direct allegations to this effect, but the Dutch media had no such qualms, and the investigation triggered a wave of smears in major local publications. One daily newspaper headlined as fact: “Dutch MH17-blogger directed by Russian secret service.” Another, which directly asserted that “Van der Werff worked on the orders of the Russian military intelligence service GRU,” is currently being sued by the researcher regarding the unproven claim.
Strikingly, throughout this period not a single mainstream journalist questioned how Bellingcat acquired the highly sensitive trove of documents upon which its investigation depended. On top of confidential GRU emails, Bellingcat somehow apparently acquired phone data showing calls between purported Russian intelligence officials and cell tower data tracking their movements, which it claimed pinpointed their locations to GRU headquarters in Moscow. None of this information is remotely “open source,” and since it wasn’t shared publicly, it can’t be independently verified.
Oddly, in one passage, Bellingcat stated “it is not clear who requested or suggested” changes to a Bonanza article it alleged were made after the piece was submitted to the GRU, before publication. One might think ascertaining this would be simple, given the vast amount of highly incriminating evidence to which Bellingcat had exclusive access. Perhaps British libel laws were a deterrent to accusing the GRU — but why would this be the case if the material was authentic, and defending it in court was no issue?
MH17 verdict undermines BellingcatThe newly-released NCTV email strongly suggests Bellingcat’s investigation into Bonanza was the product of a Western intelligence information operation, intended to steer the MH17 tribunal in a very specific direction — namely, towards the defendants’ guilt. Sure enough, Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members, the court ruling they arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly struck the plane.
Meanwhile, the only defendant to seek legal representation and give testimony during the trial, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted on all charges. The court found there was “no indication” he was involved in obtaining the missile system, that he could have prevented its use, or that he was involved in transporting it to another location after the incident. Prosecutors announced they will not appeal the verdict.
The response by the normally brash Higgins to the Dutch court’s judgment was uncharacteristically muted. In an otherwise self-congratulatory Twitter thread, he merely noted that “Pulatov is acquitted, the rest are found guilty.” There was no explanation for why the defendant was found innocent, nor any analysis of the ruling’s potential implications for Bellingcat’s MH17 investigations.
https://www.theinteldrop.org/2023/12/10/foi-request-reveals-bellingcat-collusion-with-western-intelligence-mossad-and-terrorists/
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