Raoul Moat told girlfriend ‘I’m going to go crazy’ in call that led to rampage
September 5, 2011 No Comment
Inquest also told that police received a later call from Moat saying he was hunting down officers and ‘not coming in alive’ A recording of a phone call from Raoul Moat was played to an inquest jury in which he warned his girlfriend that he was “going to go crazy” after she told him she wanted him out of her life. The call between Samantha Stobbart and the 37-year-old bouncer was made when Moat was in prison and police said it was a catalyst for his murderous rampage, Newcastle crown court heard, on the first day of the inquest. Within days of his release from Durham prison, Moat shot and injured 22-year-old Stobbart, the mother of his child, and killed her new boyfriend, 29-year-old Chris Brown. The jury also heard a later call from Moat to police in which he said he was hunting down officers and was “not coming in alive”. That call, to an emergency call handler, came after he had attacked Stobbart and Brown in Birtley, Tyne and Wear, in July 2010, and shortly before he shot unarmed Pc David Rathband, blinding him, as he sat in his police car. He claimed he had taken two hostages and would kill them and any police officer who approached him. Moat expressed remorse for injuring his girlfriend, but added that he had been “stitched up” by the police for a number of years. Moat had thought, incorrectly, that Brown was a police officer; it was what Stobbart had told him in an attempt to keep him away from her. He told the call handler: “Now, my girlfriend has been having an affair behind my back with one of your officers. This gentleman that I shot last night, the karate instructor … You bastards have been on to me, right, for years. You have hassled us, harassed us, you just won’t leave us alone. “I went straight six years ago when I met her and I have tried my best to have a normal life and you just won’t let up. You won’t leave us alone for five minutes. I can’t drive down the street without the blue lights flashing.” The call continued: “But the fact of the matter is I’m not coming in alive … You wanted me to kill myself but I’m going to give you a chance because I’m hunting for officers now, right?” The call handler said: “No. Please don’t do that. We don’t want any more killing, all right?” Moat hung up. The earlier recording was made in June 2010, while Moat was serving an 18-week prison sentence for assault. Police retrieved three recorded calls from the prison during their investigation. In one of the calls, Moat asked Stobbart: “What’s wrong?” She replied: “It’s over.” “Over what?” he asked her. “I’ve had enough,” she said. “Of what?” Moat said. “Everything.” Moat said: “We had one argument the other day. Let’s not get all silly about it.” He complained that “everybody is getting on my case” and that he was getting “picked on”. The conversation ended with the phone being slammed down. In the second call, Moat told Stobbart: “You are the only person I have ever cared about. I can’t have you out of my life. I’m going to go crazy, man.” She told him she had met a new man who was “a lot younger than you”. Superintendent Jim Napier, of Northumbria police, said: “It is clear from the evidence that Moat’s breakup with Samantha Stobbart was the catalyst for his murderous acts.” Moat – who became the subject of a huge manhunt – died following a six-hour stand-off with police marksmen. He shot himself in the head after the stand-off at Rothbury, Northumberland, during which police twice fired XREP Tasers that had not been approved by the Home Office. The 11 members of the jury sworn in at Newcastle crown court will decide whether the Taser rounds contributed to the former nightclub doorman’s death. The coroner, David Mitford, told jurors that an inquest was needed because, “Mr Moat met his death when he was effectively detained [in the siege with police]“. He added: “It will not have escaped your attention that there were some weapons called Tasers used on the night in question. Those Tasers were supplied to Northumbria Police by a firm called Pro-Tec Limited.” He urged the jurors to do “the impossible” and forget what they had already heard about the Moat case. “There will be questions about the weapons used, how police managed the incident, how officers dealt with the deceased and how he acted”, the jury was told. The jury was also read six letters in which Moat indicated he might take his own life. They were addressed to his former girlfriend, to social services, his business partner Karl Ness and other friends. The letters outlined the problems in his life and told his friends what to do with his belongings. Superintendent Napier said the letters found in a search indicated Moat was “suicidal or had been suicidal in the past” and the letters appeared to be prepared by Moat and intimated he intended to take his own life. Napier said officers also found a noose in the property near the loft hatch, he told the jury. Officers found fishing weights and material that suggested they could be converted to ammunition. ” Napier said: “Following the shooting of Pc Rathband and Moat’s declaration he was hunting for officers, this search developed on to a scale we have never really experienced in Northumbria police and I understand seldom experienced before in the UK.” Moat left a note with a friend that said: “I’m a killer and a maniac but I ain’t a coward. I’m not on the run, I will keep killing police until I am dead. They’ve hunted me for years, now it’s my turn.” The inquest, which is expected to last four weeks, continues. Raoul Moat Crime Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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At least 30 Kurdish fighters have been killed and 40 injured in clashes near Sardasht, an Iranian official has claimed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have killed at least 30 Kurdish rebels in fighting near the Iraqi border, according to a military official. A senior Iranian military spokesman, Colonel Hamid Ahmadi, told state TV that another 40 members of the Iranian Kurdish group Pejak had been injured during fierce clashes outside the border city of Sardasht. Following the clash a Pejak spokesman inside Iraq declared an immediate, unilateral ceasefire. Shirzad Kamanger appealed for Iranian forces to stop shelling rebel bases and open talks over the Kurdish group’s demands for greater rights in Iran. But Ahmadi rejected the call, saying: “A ceasefire with a terrorist group doesn’t make any sense.” He told state TV: “We want them to leave the border region before any dialogue can be held.” The fighting comes a week after the Revolutionary Guards announced a new military offensive against Pejak, or the Free Life party of Kurdistan, with the intention of driving them from their positions in Iran. Iran has sporadically bombed Pejak bases deep inside Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region. Tehran maintains it has the right to take such action and has accused Iraqi Kurds of sheltering the group, which is battling over Kurdish areas of north-western Iran. Iran Kurds Iraq Middle East David Batty guardian.co.uk
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Clegg’s demands over NHS may spark Lords amendments – as Lib Dem grassroots say bill will hurt patients and party The Tories and Liberal Democrats are facing a fresh clash over the government’s NHS reforms after Nick Clegg encouraged his MPs to put “probing questions” to ministers when the bill returns to the Commons on Tuesday. In a two-hour meeting with his parliamentary party on Monday night, the deputy prime minister held out the possibility that he will accept amendments to the heath and social care bill when it moves to the House of Lords later this month. Clegg’s move means that Lady Williams could be backed by Liberal Democrat ministers if she attempts to amend the bill to guarantee that the health secretary has a legal duty to deliver a comprehensive health service free at the point of need. But a source at the Department of Health indicated last night that Andrew Lansley, the health secretary – who has already amended the bill after the government’s “listening exercise” – would not accept fresh amendments on this point. The source said: “Our view is that the legislation is watertight on the secretary of state’s obligation to ensure there is an NHS available to all. That was always our view. But we amended the legislation to reassure those who were not sure.” Clegg said earlier in the day that he accepted the view that there was no need for fresh amendments on this issue. In a speech on schools in south-west London, he said: “Let me be absolutely clear. There is nothing, nothing, nothing in any of the government’s plans which in anyway threaten the basic founding principles of the NHS…There is no question, legally or politically, of the secretary of state under these new arrangements being somehow able to wash his or her hands of the NHS.” But at Monday night’s meeting of the Lib Dem parliamentary party, Clegg admitted that ministers still had to work hard to clarify the bill for MPs and peers with concerns. Paul Burstow, the Lib Dem health minister, is to offer further briefings to MPs and peers who will also be invited to meet officials at the department of health. All sides accept that it is too late to table further amendments on the NHS reforms when the bill is debated by MPs at report stage on Tuesday and Wednesday and at third reading on Wednesday . But Lib Dem MPs have been encouraged to put “probing questions” to ministers for possible amendments that will be tabled in the House of Lords. One Lib Dem source said: “We hope that we will not need to amend the bill further. But we may have to.” Another Lib Dem source said: “There will be robust interventions in the debate.” Lib Dem whips believe that the overwhelming number of MPs will support the amended bill. But Andrew George, the Lib Dem MP for St Ives, said he would rebel. The battle within the Lib Dem ranks was exposed last night in leaked emails, in which grassroots members of the party vented their anger at the leadership. Jeremy Sanders of Huddersfield Liberal Democrats wrote in an email to John Pugh this week, the Lib Dem backbench health committee chairman, that “yes, we can try to get improvements to the details, but none of these changes are going to alter the basic fact that the legislation is based on the assumption that what the NHS needs is a system based on private sector involvement, free market competition and internal markets. “Quite honestly, if our MPs are willing to go along with this, what exactly won’t they be willing to support?” In the same batch of emails obtained by the Guardian, Robert Hutchison, a Lib Dem councillor in Winchester, tells Pugh that “in my view is that if Lib Dem MPs vote for the bill this week — without further major amendments — it will damage the NHS and damage the party”. Charles West, one of the key party activists on the NHS, has written to party members to back an appeal against the the Lb Dem’s conference committee decision not to debate the health bill at the forthcoming party conference. “I have therefore written a letter of appeal to the Federal Conference Committee against their narrow decision not to take the motion that I and over 100 conference reps submitted in June, and in case that appeal fails we are submitting an emergency motion which will achieve the same ends”. Last month Andrew George, the Lib Dem rebel on the health bill, emailed Lib Dem activists with a blunt message: “of course I’ll try to influence colleagues but some are still basking in the synthetic afterglow of the post-pause Bill revision, perhaps having duped themselves that it’s ‘job done’! People need to wake up to the fact that we can say what we like at Conference, but the MPs main chance to influence would already have passed!” Labour twisted the knife into the Lib Dems with the party’s health spokesman John Healey arguing that Nick Clegg’s claim that he had met 11 out of the 13 changes demanded by his party’s spring conference resolution was “wrojng”. “He’s failed on seven and sallen short on six”. Baroness Thornton, the party’s spokesperson in the Lords, warned that the lack of scrutiny in the Commons — where 1,000 amenments mean just 40s of parliamentary to consider each one — could see the bill be put into a specialist committee to examine whether there is enough time to debate the bill. Writing in the Guardian, Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, a former GP who had criticised the health bill, says now is the time to back the coalition’s plans as “the structural changes to the NHS have passed the point of no return”. She argues instead that the bill needs to be amended to ensure that the choice of who is appointed to sit on and run the new NHS National Commissioning Board, a quango with £60bn to spend, is fairly and openly discussed. NHS Health Public services policy Politics Liberal Democrats Conservatives Nick Clegg Liberal-Conservative coalition Nicholas Watt Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Clegg’s demands over NHS may spark Lords amendments – as Lib Dem grassroots say bill will hurt patients and party The Tories and Liberal Democrats are facing a fresh clash over the government’s NHS reforms after Nick Clegg encouraged his MPs to put “probing questions” to ministers when the bill returns to the Commons on Tuesday. In a two-hour meeting with his parliamentary party on Monday night, the deputy prime minister held out the possibility that he will accept amendments to the heath and social care bill when it moves to the House of Lords later this month. Clegg’s move means that Lady Williams could be backed by Liberal Democrat ministers if she attempts to amend the bill to guarantee that the health secretary has a legal duty to deliver a comprehensive health service free at the point of need. But a source at the Department of Health indicated last night that Andrew Lansley, the health secretary – who has already amended the bill after the government’s “listening exercise” – would not accept fresh amendments on this point. The source said: “Our view is that the legislation is watertight on the secretary of state’s obligation to ensure there is an NHS available to all. That was always our view. But we amended the legislation to reassure those who were not sure.” Clegg said earlier in the day that he accepted the view that there was no need for fresh amendments on this issue. In a speech on schools in south-west London, he said: “Let me be absolutely clear. There is nothing, nothing, nothing in any of the government’s plans which in anyway threaten the basic founding principles of the NHS…There is no question, legally or politically, of the secretary of state under these new arrangements being somehow able to wash his or her hands of the NHS.” But at Monday night’s meeting of the Lib Dem parliamentary party, Clegg admitted that ministers still had to work hard to clarify the bill for MPs and peers with concerns. Paul Burstow, the Lib Dem health minister, is to offer further briefings to MPs and peers who will also be invited to meet officials at the department of health. All sides accept that it is too late to table further amendments on the NHS reforms when the bill is debated by MPs at report stage on Tuesday and Wednesday and at third reading on Wednesday . But Lib Dem MPs have been encouraged to put “probing questions” to ministers for possible amendments that will be tabled in the House of Lords. One Lib Dem source said: “We hope that we will not need to amend the bill further. But we may have to.” Another Lib Dem source said: “There will be robust interventions in the debate.” Lib Dem whips believe that the overwhelming number of MPs will support the amended bill. But Andrew George, the Lib Dem MP for St Ives, said he would rebel. The battle within the Lib Dem ranks was exposed last night in leaked emails, in which grassroots members of the party vented their anger at the leadership. Jeremy Sanders of Huddersfield Liberal Democrats wrote in an email to John Pugh this week, the Lib Dem backbench health committee chairman, that “yes, we can try to get improvements to the details, but none of these changes are going to alter the basic fact that the legislation is based on the assumption that what the NHS needs is a system based on private sector involvement, free market competition and internal markets. “Quite honestly, if our MPs are willing to go along with this, what exactly won’t they be willing to support?” In the same batch of emails obtained by the Guardian, Robert Hutchison, a Lib Dem councillor in Winchester, tells Pugh that “in my view is that if Lib Dem MPs vote for the bill this week — without further major amendments — it will damage the NHS and damage the party”. Charles West, one of the key party activists on the NHS, has written to party members to back an appeal against the the Lb Dem’s conference committee decision not to debate the health bill at the forthcoming party conference. “I have therefore written a letter of appeal to the Federal Conference Committee against their narrow decision not to take the motion that I and over 100 conference reps submitted in June, and in case that appeal fails we are submitting an emergency motion which will achieve the same ends”. Last month Andrew George, the Lib Dem rebel on the health bill, emailed Lib Dem activists with a blunt message: “of course I’ll try to influence colleagues but some are still basking in the synthetic afterglow of the post-pause Bill revision, perhaps having duped themselves that it’s ‘job done’! People need to wake up to the fact that we can say what we like at Conference, but the MPs main chance to influence would already have passed!” Labour twisted the knife into the Lib Dems with the party’s health spokesman John Healey arguing that Nick Clegg’s claim that he had met 11 out of the 13 changes demanded by his party’s spring conference resolution was “wrojng”. “He’s failed on seven and sallen short on six”. Baroness Thornton, the party’s spokesperson in the Lords, warned that the lack of scrutiny in the Commons — where 1,000 amenments mean just 40s of parliamentary to consider each one — could see the bill be put into a specialist committee to examine whether there is enough time to debate the bill. Writing in the Guardian, Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, a former GP who had criticised the health bill, says now is the time to back the coalition’s plans as “the structural changes to the NHS have passed the point of no return”. She argues instead that the bill needs to be amended to ensure that the choice of who is appointed to sit on and run the new NHS National Commissioning Board, a quango with £60bn to spend, is fairly and openly discussed. NHS Health Public services policy Politics Liberal Democrats Conservatives Nick Clegg Liberal-Conservative coalition Nicholas Watt Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk
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Abdul Hakim Belhaj says MI6 helped CIA arrest him and send him to Libya for torture A Libyan rebel leader who was rendered to Tripoli with the assistance of MI6 said on Monday that he had told British intelligence officers he was being tortured but they did nothing to help him. In a claim that will increase the pressure for further disclosure about the UK’s role in torture and rendition since 9/11, Abdul Hakim Belhaj said a team of British interrogators used hand signals to indicate they understood what he was telling them. “I couldn’t believe they could let this go on,” he said. “What has happened deserves a full inquiry.” Belhaj was detained by the CIA in Thailand in 2004 following an MI6 tipoff, allegedly tortured, then flown to Tripoli, where he says he suffered years of abuse in one of Muammar Gaddafi’s prisons. It emerged on Monday that MI6 had been able to tell the CIA of his whereabouts after his associates informed British diplomats in Malaysia that he wished to claim asylum in the UK. Belhaj was then allowed to board a flight for London and abducted when the plane called at Bangkok. There were signs that the discovery of a cache of secret MI6 and CIA documents at an abandoned government office building in Tripoli was triggering panic in some parts of Whitehall. The papers detail the UK’s role not only in the rendition of Belhaj, but in that of a second man, known as Abu Munthir. This operation appears to have been planned by British and Libyan intelligence officers without any CIA involvement. David Cameron said the disclosures would be investigated by the Gibson inquiry, set up last year to examine the UK’s role in torture and rendition. It was unclear whether MI6 or MI5 had disclosed anything to the inquiry before the new documents came to light. Inquiry staff first indicated they knew nothing about the Libyan operations, and were seeking information from the government “as soon as possible”. Later they said they had “received material relating to these issues”, but declined to be more specific. Similarly, the Conservative MP Richard Ottaway, a former member of the intelligence and security committee, a Westminster body supposed to provide oversight of MI5 and MI6, indicated the committee knew nothing about the UK-Libya operations before giving the agencies a clean bill of health in a 2007 report on rendition; he then said he could say nothing about the matter. Belhaj on Monday revealed more details of the lead-up to his rendition on 6 March 2004, which he says came amid his attempts to reach the UK, of which the government had become aware. He said he had first tried to travel to London from Kuala Lumpur via Beijing in late February that year. However, he was refused permission to board in Beijing, despite carrying a French passport, which does not require a pre-issued UK visa. He was returned to Kuala Lumpur where he was detained by Malaysian immigration officials. It is understood that an associate of Belhaj then visited the British embassy in Kuala Lumpur advising officials there of his intention to seek political asylum in the UK. Shortly afterwards he was freed from the detention centre and allowed to buy a ticket to London via Bangkok. By then he had disposed of his French passport, issued to a Jamal Kaderi, and was travelling on a Moroccan passport, issued in the name of Abdul al-Nabi. Holders of Moroccan passports require a pre-issued visa to enter the UK, but Belhaj said he did not apply for a visa and was allowed to board without one – a highly unusual practice. The revelation raises fresh questions about the extent of the government’s role in Belhaj’s rendition. Documents discovered last Friday reveal that a senior MI6 officer, Mark Allen, had written to Libyan spy chief Moussa Koussa congratulating him on receiving Belhaj and acknowledging that “the intelligence was British”. “I would not board until they assured me that I could travel to the UK,” Belhaj said. “They did that and I got on the plane.” Belhaj was captured by CIA officers, in co-operation with Thai authorities, inside Bangkok airport. He says he was tortured at a site in the airport grounds and then sent to Libya, where Gaddafi had long seen him as one of the biggest threats to his tyrannical four-decade rule. “The British were the second team to visit me,” he said. “They came about a month after I was returned to Libya and they were very well briefed about LIFG [Libyan Islamic Fighting Group] members in the UK. They knew everything, even their code names. They wanted to know more details about the LIFG and also about the general environment elsewhere, al-Qaida, that sort of thing. There was a woman who was leading the team, a big man and a third person who was translating. They only came one time.” Belhaj said intelligence officers from other European countries, including France, Germany and Italy, also travelled to Tripoli to speak to him inside the infamous Abu Selim prison in the south of the capital. Before each visit he was told by Libyan officers – and sometimes by Koussa – to “tell the British and others that the people they are asking about are al-Qaida”. “The Libyans told me that if I told them that I would be treated better.” He said Koussa, who fled the Gaddafi regime in March with MI6 help, would often taunt him in prison, with threats that he would die there. On one occasion Koussa ordered guards to put a shade over half of Belhaj’s cell window, to reduce what little sunlight he was getting. Files seen by the Guardian on Sunday inside the now ransacked offices of the external security service reveal that Libyan spies remained in close co-operation with the CIA and MI6 as late as November last year. The files reveal the Americans, in particular, were regularly requesting information about the identities of Libyan cellphone users. One document showed that the CIA had responded to a Libyan request about the user of a satellite phone by giving GPS references for every call made. CIA rendition MI6 Libya Torture Middle East Africa Arab and Middle East unrest CIA Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Abdul Hakim Belhaj says MI6 helped CIA arrest him and send him to Libya for torture A Libyan rebel leader who was rendered to Tripoli with the assistance of MI6 said on Monday that he had told British intelligence officers he was being tortured but they did nothing to help him. In a claim that will increase the pressure for further disclosure about the UK’s role in torture and rendition since 9/11, Abdul Hakim Belhaj said a team of British interrogators used hand signals to indicate they understood what he was telling them. “I couldn’t believe they could let this go on,” he said. “What has happened deserves a full inquiry.” Belhaj was detained by the CIA in Thailand in 2004 following an MI6 tipoff, allegedly tortured, then flown to Tripoli, where he says he suffered years of abuse in one of Muammar Gaddafi’s prisons. It emerged on Monday that MI6 had been able to tell the CIA of his whereabouts after his associates informed British diplomats in Malaysia that he wished to claim asylum in the UK. Belhaj was then allowed to board a flight for London and abducted when the plane called at Bangkok. There were signs that the discovery of a cache of secret MI6 and CIA documents at an abandoned government office building in Tripoli was triggering panic in some parts of Whitehall. The papers detail the UK’s role not only in the rendition of Belhaj, but in that of a second man, known as Abu Munthir. This operation appears to have been planned by British and Libyan intelligence officers without any CIA involvement. David Cameron said the disclosures would be investigated by the Gibson inquiry, set up last year to examine the UK’s role in torture and rendition. It was unclear whether MI6 or MI5 had disclosed anything to the inquiry before the new documents came to light. Inquiry staff first indicated they knew nothing about the Libyan operations, and were seeking information from the government “as soon as possible”. Later they said they had “received material relating to these issues”, but declined to be more specific. Similarly, the Conservative MP Richard Ottaway, a former member of the intelligence and security committee, a Westminster body supposed to provide oversight of MI5 and MI6, indicated the committee knew nothing about the UK-Libya operations before giving the agencies a clean bill of health in a 2007 report on rendition; he then said he could say nothing about the matter. Belhaj on Monday revealed more details of the lead-up to his rendition on 6 March 2004, which he says came amid his attempts to reach the UK, of which the government had become aware. He said he had first tried to travel to London from Kuala Lumpur via Beijing in late February that year. However, he was refused permission to board in Beijing, despite carrying a French passport, which does not require a pre-issued UK visa. He was returned to Kuala Lumpur where he was detained by Malaysian immigration officials. It is understood that an associate of Belhaj then visited the British embassy in Kuala Lumpur advising officials there of his intention to seek political asylum in the UK. Shortly afterwards he was freed from the detention centre and allowed to buy a ticket to London via Bangkok. By then he had disposed of his French passport, issued to a Jamal Kaderi, and was travelling on a Moroccan passport, issued in the name of Abdul al-Nabi. Holders of Moroccan passports require a pre-issued visa to enter the UK, but Belhaj said he did not apply for a visa and was allowed to board without one – a highly unusual practice. The revelation raises fresh questions about the extent of the government’s role in Belhaj’s rendition. Documents discovered last Friday reveal that a senior MI6 officer, Mark Allen, had written to Libyan spy chief Moussa Koussa congratulating him on receiving Belhaj and acknowledging that “the intelligence was British”. “I would not board until they assured me that I could travel to the UK,” Belhaj said. “They did that and I got on the plane.” Belhaj was captured by CIA officers, in co-operation with Thai authorities, inside Bangkok airport. He says he was tortured at a site in the airport grounds and then sent to Libya, where Gaddafi had long seen him as one of the biggest threats to his tyrannical four-decade rule. “The British were the second team to visit me,” he said. “They came about a month after I was returned to Libya and they were very well briefed about LIFG [Libyan Islamic Fighting Group] members in the UK. They knew everything, even their code names. They wanted to know more details about the LIFG and also about the general environment elsewhere, al-Qaida, that sort of thing. There was a woman who was leading the team, a big man and a third person who was translating. They only came one time.” Belhaj said intelligence officers from other European countries, including France, Germany and Italy, also travelled to Tripoli to speak to him inside the infamous Abu Selim prison in the south of the capital. Before each visit he was told by Libyan officers – and sometimes by Koussa – to “tell the British and others that the people they are asking about are al-Qaida”. “The Libyans told me that if I told them that I would be treated better.” He said Koussa, who fled the Gaddafi regime in March with MI6 help, would often taunt him in prison, with threats that he would die there. On one occasion Koussa ordered guards to put a shade over half of Belhaj’s cell window, to reduce what little sunlight he was getting. Files seen by the Guardian on Sunday inside the now ransacked offices of the external security service reveal that Libyan spies remained in close co-operation with the CIA and MI6 as late as November last year. The files reveal the Americans, in particular, were regularly requesting information about the identities of Libyan cellphone users. One document showed that the CIA had responded to a Libyan request about the user of a satellite phone by giving GPS references for every call made. CIA rendition MI6 Libya Torture Middle East Africa Arab and Middle East unrest CIA Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk
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Sir Jack Harvie, the Scottish Tories’ most influential fundraiser, has condemned Murdo Fraser’s plans to form a new party The Scottish Conservative party is facing civil war after its most influential fundraiser condemned proposals to dissolve the Tories and form a new party . Sir Jack Harvie , a Scottish businessman who has raised millions for the Tories, said he would not work with the new centre-right party proposed by Murdo Fraser, the Scottish Tories’ deputy leader. Fraser, favourite to be the next leader, was accused by Harvie of planning to set up a “separatist” and “breakaway” party not sanctioned by members. The row developed as party sources spoke of a power struggle among its most senior backers for control of funding streams. Harvie said he would continue funding the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party (Scup) if its members rejected Fraser’s new party. He also hinted that he believed Fraser’s proposals were not backed by David Cameron or senior UK officials – a view disputed by Fraser’s allies. Harvie said Fraser and his backers, including the former presiding officer of the Scottish parliament, Alex Fergusson, its education spokeswoman Liz Smith and MEP Struan Stevenson, would have to leave the party if he lost the election. “Having scandalised Scup by word and deed they would surely have no place within Scup in the future,” he said. “And, for that matter, given his intention to form a breakaway party, why would Mr Fraser choose to stand for the leadership of a party he does not support or recognise?” Fraser, the favourite to succeed Annabel Goldie as Scottish Tory leader, believes dissolving Scup and replacing it with a new, wholly independent party is the only way for centre-right politics in Scotland to recover from decades of decline. From winning 22 Scottish seats under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, it was totally wiped out in 1997 and has since had only one Scottish MP at Westminster. It lost two seats at the last Scottish elections, its numbers cut to 15 out of 129 seats. “There is no future for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party in its current form,” Fraser said. “It is, without exaggeration, adapt or die. It’s time to try something different, a bold new direction … [We] will build a new movement to bring back the thousands of people who have left us over the years.” Harvie’s warning carries significant weight. He is a vital part of the Focus on Scotland donors group which raises £1m a year for the party through dinners for wealthy supporters. His threats were echoed by one of Fraser’s rivals for the leadership, Ruth Davidson. But Fraser said a vision for a “new unionism” with a distinctively Scottish outlook and identity was the party’s only hope of successfully opposing first minister Alex Salmond’s proposals for independence. A poll published on Friday by TNS-BMRB (pdf) put support for independence marginally ahead for the first time recently, at 39% to 38% against. In a further move away from the current Tory position on devolution, Fraser indicated he wanted greater decentralisation of powers from London, with the Scottish parliament given new financial powers short of the full financial autonomy Salmond wants. Fraser rejected talk of a second centre-right party, and said he would scrap the existing party and relaunch it only if members agreed. It would be wholly independent of the UK party being led by Cameron but would take the Conservative party whip at Westminster, except on policies it did not support, such as retaining the EU’s common fisheries policy. “There’s no room for two centre-right parties in Scotland,” he said. “We will stay together. We will jump together or not jump at all.” Several sources dismissed the significance of Harvie’s threat to withhold funding. They said many senior donors to Focus on Scotland were interested in backing Fraser and named two wealthy businessmen who have pledged to fund a new Scottish party. One, Robert Gibbons, a retired corporate lawyer who was founding chairman for the bottled water firm Highland Spring, told the Guardian he had pledges from potential donors worth £500,000. A second, Robert Kilgour, who runs an investment firm, said he would transfer his “five figure” donations from the UK party in London to Fraser’s new Scottish organisation. Fraser can so far count prominent Tories such as Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former foreign secretary and Scottish secretary, as supporters, while Michael Gove, the UK education secretary and a Scot, appears to be in favour. His opponents, however, include Liam Fox, the defence secretary, and Lord Forsyth, a former Scottish secretary who is immensely popular among party activists. Only Forsyth lives in Scotland. The Scottish Tories have suffered a series of extremely poor elections since their peak in 1979 when Thatcher first became prime minister. Its fortunes declined under Thatcher and John Major, her successor. In 1997 it lost every Westminster seat, and has managed to win just one in each general election since despite the “bounce” in support for the Tories in England under Cameron. At the last Scottish elections, in May, the Tories won just 15 out of 129 seats, leading to Goldie’s resignation as leader. Scottish politics Conservatives Scotland Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Rebel reinforcements arrived outside one of Moammar Gadhafi’s last strongholds in Bani Walid today, even as the forces arrayed against the toppled dictator gave the town a chance to surrender and avoid a fight. “We won’t go inside Bani Walid unless the Warfala tribe invites us,” says a rebel commander,…
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