Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
Diana
crash inquiry report: Final report by Paris prosecutor's
office MI6
and the Princess of Wales by Richard
Tomlinson MI6's
plot to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia in 1992 by
Richard Tomlinson During the 1990's, MI6 is
alleged to have been involved in two attempts to kill
leaders of foreign government's: President Milosevic of the
Yugoslav Republic of Serbia in 1992, and Libya's leader,
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, in 1996. Although it appears that
the initial attempt to kill Milosevic was abandoned, during
NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, a second
attempt was made to kill him and his family, when his house
was hit by missiles from US bombers. Like Milosevic, Gaddafi
has been lucky - in 1986, US bombers flew from Britain to
kill Gaddafi and his family - they failed, but 55 civilians
in Tripoli, along with his daughter died in the attack.
In 1998, news broke with
claims that Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had
tried to assassinate him in 1996. These revelations came
from the former MI6 agent David
Shayler, who
held a mid-level position in MI5, Britain's domestic
security agency. He told the BBC, that he that learned MI6
had channeled US $160,000 to an underground, Islamic
fundamentalist group in Libya to assassinate Gaddafi.
Shayler was attached to the joint MI5/MI6 joint Libyan task
force. Shayler claims the Libyan extremists planted a large
bomb in February, 1996, on a road along which the Libyan
leader's motorcade was to travel. The bomb detonated under
the wrong vehicle. Six bystanders, government officials, and
security personnel were killed. Gaddafi escaped
unharmed. The reason we are printing
Richard Tomlinson's letter to his lawyer below, is because
of the similarities between the way MI6 planned to kill
Milosevic and the way Princess Diana died in the car crash
in Paris in August 1997. If these accounts are true,
then they confirm the widely held belief that MI6 has not
only planned and attempted to kill the leaders of Libya and
Yugoslavia, it also had the means to kill Princess Diana.
Read Tomlinson's account below and see what you think. More
information on both these cases has been published in
Stephen Dorrill's new book MI6: Fifty Years of Special
Operations (Fourth Estate, London, UK, 2000).
Tomlinson is has now
published The Big Breach, his account of his service in MI6
in Russia in January 2001, and it is unclear whether it has
any references to the death of Princess Diana or the alleged
attempt to kill Milosevic One final editors note:
because of the British governments continuing harassment of
journalists and newspapers such as The Guardian and
The Observer over publishing names of MI6 officers,
we have deleted their names from the document and replaced
them with either "X" or "A" etc. Seán Mac
Mathúna Geneva 1201, John Wadham' 1998 Dear John, As requested, I enclose a
statement detailing MI6's plot to assassinate President
Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia in 1992. When you have read it, lets
discuss the best way to proceed. Yours sincerely, Richard
Tomlinson MI6 1992 proposal to
assassinate President Slobodan Milosevic of
Serbia Dear Sir, I would like to bring to your
attention a proposal by MI6 to assassinate President
Milosevic of Serbia. My motive in doing this is to draw to
your attention the casual and cavalier attitude that many
MI6 officers have to British and international law. The
officer who wrote this proposal clearly could (and in my
view, should) be charged with conspiracy to murder. He will
no doubt escape unpunished, like many other MI6 officers who
routinely break the law. This lack of legal accountability
of MI6 officers needs to be addressed urgently. From March 1992 until September
1993 I worked in the East European controllerate of MI6
under the staff designation of UKA/7. My role was to carry
out natural cover operations (undercover as a businessman or
journalist etc) in eastern Europe. The Balkan war was in its
early stages at this time, and so my responsibilities were
increasingly directed to this arena. My work thus involved frequent
contact with the officer responsible for developing and
targeting operations in the Balkans. At the time, this was
X, who worked under the staff designation of P4/OPS. We
would frequently meet in his office on the 11th floor of
Century House to discuss proposed and ongoing operations
that I was involved in and, indeed, many other operations
which I was not myself involved in. During one such meeting in the
summer of 1992 X casually mentioned that he was working on a
proposal to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia. I
laughed, and dismissed his claim as an idle boast as I
(naively) thought that MI6 would never contemplate such an
operation. X insisted that it was true, and appeared
somewhat offended that I did not believe him. However, I
still presumed that he was just pulling my leg, and thought
nothing more of the incident A few days later, I called in
again to X's office. After a few moments of conversation, he
triumphantly pulled out a document from a file on his desk,
tossed it over to me, and suggested I read it. To my
astonishment, it was indeed a proposal to assassinate
President Milosevic of Serbia. The minute was approximately 2
pages long, and had a yellow minute card attached to it
which signified that it was an accountable document rather
than a draft proposal. It was entitled "The need to
assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia". In the
distribution list in the margin were P4 (Head of Balkan
operations, then A), SBO1/T (Security officer responsible
for eastern European operations, then B), C/CEE (Controller
of east European operations, then C or possibly D), MODA/SO
(The SAS liaison officer attached to MI6, then Major E), and
H/SECT (the private secretary to Sir Colin McColl, then
F). The first page of the document
was a political "justification" to assassinate President
Milosevic. X's justification was basically that there was
evidence that Milosevic was providing arms and support to
President Radovan Karadzic in the breakaway republic of
Bosnian Serbia. The remainder of the document
proposed three methods to assassinate Milosevic. The first
method was to train and equip a Serbian paramilitary
opposition group to assassinate Milosevic in Serbia. X
argued that this method would have the advantage of
deniability, but the disadvantage that control of the
operation would be low and the chances of success
unpredictable. The second method was to use the Increment (a
small cell of the SAS and SBS which is especially selected
and trained to carry out operations exclusively for MI5/MI6)
to infiltrate Serbia and attack Milosevic either with a bomb
or sniper ambush. X argued that this would plan would be the
most reliable, but would be undeniable if it went wrong. X's
third proposal was to kill Milosevic in a staged car crash,
possibly during one of his visits to the ICFY (International
Conference on the Former Yugoslavia) in Geneva, Switzerland.
X even provided a suggestion about how this could be done,
such as by disorientating Milosevic's chauffeur using a
blinding strobe light as the cavalcade passed through one of
Geneva's motorway tunnels. There was no doubt in my mind
when I read X's proposal that he was entirely serious about
pursuing his plan. X was an ambitious and serious officer,
who would not frivolise his career by making such a proposal
in jest or merely to impress me. However, I heard no more
about the progress of this proposal, and did not expect to,
as I was not on its distribution list. I ask you to investigate this
matter fully. I believe that legal action should be taken
against X, to show other MI6 officers that they should not
assume that they can murder and carry out other illegal acts
with impunity. Yours sincerely Richard
Tomlinson
Milosevic:
the way MI6 is alleged to have planned to
kill him in 1992, was the same way as
Princess Diana died in 1997. NATO bombers
made another attempt to kill him in 1999,
when his residence was bombed, and in the
same year, Yugoslav
intelligence
services claimed to uncovered another plot,
this time involving French NATO forces in
Bosnia.
"(The) proposal was
to kill Milosevic in a staged car crash, possibly during
one of his visits to the ICFY (International Conference
on the Former Yugoslavia) in Geneva, Switzerland. X even
provided a suggestion about how this could be done, such
as by disorientating Milosevic's chauffeur using a
blinding strobe light as the cavalcade passed through one
of Geneva's motorway tunnels".
Switzerland
Liberty'
21 Tabard Street,
London SE1,
England