Birmingham man charged with plotting to carry out terror attack armed with knife
A MAN has been charged with plotting to carry out a terror attack armed with a knife, police said.
Ummariyat Mirza was arrested by counter-terror police on Alum Rock Road, Birmingham, last Wednesday.
The 21-year-old, from St Agathas Road, Birmingham, is accused of buying a blade and conducting research to carry out a deadly assault.
West Midlands Police said he is also charged with possessing the bomb-making guide the Anarchist Cookbook and an extremist document called the Mujahideen Poisons handbook.
The Anarchist Cookbook, first published in 1971, is a book that contains instructions for the manufacture of explosives, rudimentary telecommunications phreaking devices, and other items. The book also includes instructions for home manufacturing of illicit drugs, including LSD. It was written by William Powell at the apex of the counterculture era in order to protest against United States involvement in the Vietnam War.
Publication status
The copyright of the book never belonged to its author, but to its publisher Lyle Stuart. Stuart kept publishing the book until the company was bought in 1991 by Steven Schragis, who decided to drop it. Out of the 2,000 books published by the company, it was the only one that Schragis decided to stop publishing. Schragis said publishers have a responsibility to the public, and the book had no positive social purpose that could justify keeping it in print.
In December 2013, it was reported that the copyright had been bought in 2002 by Delta Press, an Arkansas-based publisher that specialises in controversial books, and the book is their “most-asked-for volume”.
The latest publication date is October 16, 2012 (ISBN 978-1607965237), and the book is available in both paperback and hardback from Snowball Publishing. Reviewers say the copy has its basis in a 2002 revision and shows heavy editing and many items removed over the original 1971 edition.
Author
Since writing the book, Powell converted to Anglicanism in 1976 and attempted to have the book removed from circulation. When Lyle Stuart published the book, its copyright was taken out in the publisher’s name, not Powell’s, and the current publisher had no desire to remove the book from print. Powell has written his desire to see it removed from circulation, as he stopped advocating what he had written.
On 19 December 2013, William Powell wrote an article in The Guardian to call for the book to “quickly and quietly go out of print”. Powell died in July 2016.
Reception
At the time of its publication, one Federal Bureau of Investigation memo described The Anarchist Cookbook as “one of the crudest, low-brow, paranoiac writing efforts ever attempted”.
In 2010, the FBI released the bulk of its investigative file on The Anarchist Cookbook.
Anarchism
Advocates of anarchism dispute the association of the book with anarchist political philosophy. The anarchist collective CrimethInc., which published the book Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook in response, denounces the earlier book, saying it was “not composed or released by anarchists, not derived from anarchist practice, not intended to promote freedom and autonomy or challenge repressive power – and was barely a cookbook, as most of the recipes in it are notoriously unreliable”.
Online presence
Much of the publication was copied and made available as text documents online through Usenet and FTP sites hosted in academic institutions in the early 1990s, and has been made available via web browsers from their inception in the mid-1990s to the present day. The name varies slightly from Anarchist Cookbook to Anarchy Cookbook and the topics have expanded vastly in the intervening decades. Many of the articles were attributed to an anonymous author called The Jolly Roger.
In 2001, British businessman Terrance Brown created the now defunct website anarchist-cookbook.com and sold copies of his derivative work, entitled Anarchist Cookbook 2000.
Knowledge of the book, or copied online publications of it, increased along with the increase in public access to the Internet throughout the mid-1990s. Newspapers ran stories about how easy the text was to get hold of, and the influence it may have had with terrorists, criminals and experimental teenagers.
In 2007, a 17-year-old was arrested in the United Kingdom and faced charges under anti-terrorism law in the UK for possession of this book, among other things . He was cleared of all charges in October 2008, after arguing that he was a prankster who just wanted to research fireworks and smoke bombs.
In County Durham, UK in 2010, Ian Davison and his son were imprisoned under anti-terrorism laws for the manufacturing of ricin, and their possession of The Anarchist Cookbook, along with its availability, was noted by the authorities.
In 2013, renewed calls were made in the United States to ban this book, citing links to a school shooting in Colorado by Karl Pierson.
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The Anarchist Cookbook
Buy the book
The Anarchist Cookbook will shock, it will disturb, it will provoke. It places in historical perspective an era when “Turn on, Burn down, Blow up” are revolutionary slogans of the day. Says the author” “This book… is not written for the members of fringe political groups, such as the Weatherman, or The Minutemen. Those radical groups don’t need this book. They already know everything that’s in here. If the real people of America, the silent majority, are going to survive, they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book.” In what the author considers a survival guide, there is explicit information on the uses and effects of drugs, ranging from pot to heroin to peanuts. There i detailed advice concerning electronics, sabotage, and surveillance, with data on everything from bugs to scramblers. There is a comprehensive chapter on natural, non-lethal, and lethal weapons, running the gamut from cattle prods to submachine guns to bows and arrows. The section on explosives and booby traps ranges from TNT to whistle traps. One hundred and eleven drawings supplement the recipes. “This book is for anarchists,” says William Powell, “Those who feel able to discipline themselves on all the subjects from drugs, to weapons, to explosives) that are currently illegal in this country.” Techniques, disciplines, precautions, and warnings pervade what may be the most disquieting “how-to” book of contemporary times.
Birmingham man charged with plotting to carry out terror attack armed with knife
A MAN has been charged with plotting to carry out a terror attack armed with a knife, police said.
Ummariyat Mirza was arrested by counter-terror police on Alum Rock Road, Birmingham, last Wednesday.
The 21-year-old, from St Agathas Road, Birmingham, is accused of buying a blade and conducting research to carry out a deadly assault.
West Midlands Police said he is also charged with possessing the bomb-making guide the Anarchist Cookbook and an extremist document called the Mujahideen Poisons handbook.
Do Not Try Anything within this book/PDF as it may be illegal and more to the point dangerous I n the extreme
The views and opinions expressed in this link/PDF and/or documentaries are soley intended to educate and provide background information to those interested in the matter in question. They in no way reflect my own opinions and I take no responsibility for any inaccuracies or factual errors.
A row over Gibraltar has broken out after the UK sent a letter formally triggering Brexit talks. But why have tensions risen over the Rock and why is it important?
Why is Gibraltar British?
Gibraltar, located at the bottom of Spain on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula, was under the rule of the Moors – a group of Muslim inhabitants – from AD711 to 1462, like most of Spain.
Spain (initially Castile) controlled the territory from 1462 to 1704.
In 1704 it was seized by an Anglo-Dutch force from Spain before being ceded to Great Britain in 1713 and has remained a UK territory ever since.
Totalling 2.3-sq-mile (5.9 sq-km) in land mass, the territory is dominated by the 1,300ft high (397m) limestone Rock of Gibraltar.
What does Spain say… and Gibraltarians?
Spain believes Gibraltar was taken in the context of a Spanish dispute over who should inherit the crown.
The UK notes Gibraltar was ceded by Spain in the Treaty of Utrecht and points to the fact it has occupied the land for longer.
Both countries cite UN principles as supporting their claims.
Gibraltar – a territory with a population of 32,000 – believes it has the right of self determination – something Spain disputes.
Gibraltarians are British citizens and rejected by 99% to 1% the idea of the UK sharing sovereignty with Spain in a vote in 2002 and in a previous referendum in 1967.
Why is it important?
Although Gibraltar is small, it is strategically important because of its location, standing only 12 miles from the north coast of Africa.
The UK has a military base there, including a port and airstrip. It was an important naval base during World War Two.
Gibraltar’s location on the Strait also gives it important access to commercial shipping, oil transportation and military-related transport.
Spain has accused Gibraltar of being a corporate tax haven, allowing companies and wealthy individuals to avoid paying millions.
Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory which means it is under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom but is not technically a part of it. This has long been a bone of contention with Spain and occasionally (like now) the UK & Spain find themselves at loggerheads over ownership of the “rock”.
(There are 14 British Overseas Territories in the world including Bermuda and the Falkland Islands.)
2. Britain has 300 years of sovereignty over the Rock and almost all of its inhabitants want to remain with Britain.
3. Gibraltar is also part of the European Union because of its connection to the UK but is outside several of the economic associations (such as the customs union, the VAT area, and the Schengen Area).
4. Gibraltar is just 6.8km2 in size and, with a population of about 30,000 people
5. It has the 5th highest density of any country or territory in the world.
6. English is the official language of Gibraltar but many people also speak Spanish and the local language, which is called Llanito and has a mix of Mediterranean words in it.
7. Gibraltarians consider themselves to be culturally British, rather than culturally Spanish.
8. When asked, at the referendum in 2002, whether Spain and the UK should share sovereignty of Gibraltar, more than 98% of Gibraltarians said it should remain British.
9. Gibraltar may have been the place where the Neanderthals died out. A study published in Nature in 2006 suggested they were living in a cave site on the south-east of Gibraltar up to 24,000 years ago (later than the 30,000 years previously thought). However, new carbon dating may be about to force archaeologists to rethink that.
10. Gibraltar is named in Arabic Jabal Tariq, after the Muslim commander Tariq Ibn-Ziyad. He turned ‘the rock’ into a fortress in 711 A.D, and it has been an important naval base for more than 1,000 years.
11. The straight of Gibraltar may be even more famous than the actual city itself! The body of water carries an immense historical importance in the world, that even holds weight in today’s society. Not only does the straight act as a passageway from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean, but its close proximity to Africa only magnifies the nine miles of water in between.
12. The Tower of Homage is all that remains of the Moorish Castle that dates back to the 11th The castle saw a lot of action, especially during the 16th Century (1540) when hundreds of people found safety inside the castle when Turkish pirates attacked Gibraltar.
13. A British flag has flown at The Tower of Homage ever since Admiral Rooke erected the first British flag here when he captured the Rock in 1704
14. The official currency of Gibraltar is the pound and you can spend notes and coins from the UK in the territory – but you can’t use the locally-produced notes or coins back in the UK.
15. Gibraltar has a very religiously diverse population. Spanish and British influence brought Catholicism and Protestantism to Gibraltar respectively. The territory’s proximity to Morocco accounts for the large Muslim population, and Gibraltar is also home to many Jews whose ancestors fled south following the Spanish Inquisition. There is also a small Hindu population and a Hindu temple.
16. Gibraltar has its own political system that makes many decisions within the territory but issues like defence and foreign affairs are determined by the UK Government in London.
17. There are thought to be about 230 Barbary macaques on the rock, the only wild population of the monkeys in Europe. Last year, more than 50 people were treated in hospital following attacks from the monkeys.
18. Brian Jones also had a run-in with the monkeys. In 1967, the Rolling Stones’ guitarist, accompanied by Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull – all on LSD – visited the colony in Gibraltar en route to meet the rest of the band in Morocco. According to Faithfull’s autobiography, Jones decided he wanted to play a tape of music he had made for a film starring Pallenberg to the monkeys. “We approached the troop of monkeys very ceremoniously,” she writes, “and told them we were going to play them some wonderful sounds. They listened to all this very attentively, but when Brian turned on the tape recorder, they didn’t seem to care for it. They seemed alarmed by it and scampered away shrieking. Brian got very upset. He took it personally. He became hysterical and started sobbing.”
19. Gibraltar uses the same timezone as Spain (not the UK) and the people drive on the right like in continental Europe (but not in the UK).
20. Gibraltar celebrates National Day on September 10th. Each year they release 30,000 red and white balloons – one for every citizen.
An Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltar from Spain in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession on behalf of the Habsburg claim to the Spanish throne. The territory was subsequently ceded to Great Britain “in perpetuity” under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. During World War II it was an important base for the Royal Navy as it controlled the entrance and exit to the Mediterranean Sea, which is only eight miles (13 km) wide at this naval “choke point” and remains strategically important so to this day with half the world’s seaborne trade passing through the strait.[10][11][12] Today Gibraltar’s economy is based largely on tourism, online gambling, financial services, and shipping.[13][14]
The sovereignty of Gibraltar is a major point of contention in Anglo-Spanish relations as Spain asserts a claim to the territory, despite recognising British sovereignty in several previous treaties.[14] Gibraltarians overwhelmingly rejected proposals for Spanish sovereignty in a 1967 referendum and again in 2002. Under the Gibraltar constitution of 2006, Gibraltar governs its own affairs, though some powers, such as defence and foreign relations, remain the responsibility of the British .
Footage has emerged of an intriguing network of caves found through a rabbit hole that many believe were built by the Knights Templar order 700 years ago.
The sanctuary in Shropshire is located under an unassuming set of what appear to be large rabbit holes in a farmer’s field near the town of Shifnal.
The caves, some of which have to be accessed on hands and knees, are one metre underground and are carved out of sandstone. They feature several alcoves and a font.
It remains unclear exactly what the caves were used for or when they were built, but Historic England describes them as a “grotto” and states it appears they have recently been used for “black magic rites”
Photographer Michael Scott said: “I traipsed over a field to find it, but if you didn’t know it was there you would just walk right past it. Considering how long it’s been there it’s in amazing condition, it’s like an underground temple.”
“I had to crouch down and once I was in it was completely silent. There were a few spiders in there but that was it. It was raining so the slope down was quite sludgy but inside the cave was bone dry.”
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), also known as the Order of Solomon’s Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers, Arabic: فرسان الهيكل), the Knights Templar, or simply as Templars, was a Christian military order recognised in 1139 by papal bullOmne Datum Optimum of the Holy See.[4] The order was founded in 1119 and active from about 1129 to 1312.
The order, which was among the wealthiest and most powerful, became a favoured charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. They were prominent in Christian finance. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.
Non-combatant members of the order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, developing innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.
The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the order faded. Rumours about the Templars’ secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of France – deeply in debt to the order – took advantage of the situation to gain control over them. In 1307, he had many of the order’s members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and burned at the stake.
Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312 under pressure from King Philip.
The abrupt reduction in power of a significant group in European society gave rise to speculation, legend, and legacy through the ages. The re-use of their name for later organizations has kept the name “Templar” alive to the modern day.
Knights Templar Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici Hierosolymitanis
After Europeans in the First Crusade recovered Jerusalem in 1099, many Christians made pilgrimages to various sacred sites in the Holy Land. Although the city of Jerusalem was under relatively secure Christian control, the rest of Outremer was not. Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon pilgrims, who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at Jaffa into the interior of the Holy Land.
The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al-Aqsa Mosque as Solomon’s Temple, and from this location the new order took the name of Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or “Templar” knights. The order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive.
Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasising the order’s poverty.
The first headquarters of the Knights Templar, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Crusaders called it the Temple of Solomon and from this location derived their name of Templar.
The impoverished status of the Templars did not last long. They had a powerful advocate in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading Church figure, the French abbot primarily responsible for the founding of the Cistercian Order of monks and a nephew of André de Montbard, one of the founding knights. Bernard put his weight behind them and wrote persuasively on their behalf in the letter ‘In Praise of the New Knighthood’, and in 1129, at the Council of Troyes, he led a group of leading churchmen to officially approve and endorse the order on behalf of the church. With this formal blessing, the Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the Holy Land. Another major benefit came in 1139, when Pope Innocent II‘s papal bullOmne Datum Optimum exempted the order from obedience to local laws.
This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through all borders, were not required to pay any taxes, and were exempt from all authority except that of the pope.
With its clear mission and ample resources, the order grew rapidly. Templars were often the advance shock troops in key battles of the Crusades, as the heavily armoured knights on their warhorses would set out to charge at the enemy, ahead of the main army bodies, in an attempt to break opposition lines. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 during the Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templar knights helped several thousand infantry to defeat Saladin‘s army of more than 26,000 soldiers.
A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armour of faith, just as his body is protected by the armour of steel. He is thus doubly armed, and need fear neither demons nor men.”
Bernard de Clairvaux, c. 1135,
De Laude Novae Militae—In Praise of the New Knighthood
Although the primary mission of the order was military, relatively few members were combatants. The others acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the financial infrastructure. The Templar Order, though its members were sworn to individual poverty, was given control of wealth beyond direct donations. A nobleman who was interested in participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar management while he was away. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom and the Outremer, the order in 1150 began generating letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, then used that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds in an amount of treasure of equal value.
This innovative arrangement was an early form of banking and may have been the first formal system to support the use of cheques; it improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets for thieves, and also contributed to the Templar coffers.
Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built massive stone cathedrals and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualifies as the world’s first multinational corporation.
In the mid-12th century, the tide began to turn in the Crusades. The Muslim world had become more united under effective leaders such as Saladin, and dissension arose amongst Christian factions in, and concerning, the Holy Land. The Knights Templar were occasionally at odds with the two other Christian military orders, the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights, and decades of internecine feuds weakened Christian positions, both politically and militarily. After the Templars were involved in several unsuccessful campaigns, including the pivotal Battle of Hattin, Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim forces under Saladin in 1187.
The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II reclaimed the city for Christians in the Sixth Crusade of 1229, without Templar aid, but only held it briefly for a little more than a decade. In 1244, the Ayyubids, together with Khwarezmi mercenaries recaptured Jerusalem, and the city did not return to Western control until 1917 when the British captured it from the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to other cities in the north, such as the seaport of Acre, which they held for the next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their last mainland strongholds, Tortosa (Tartus in what is now Syria) and Atlit in present-day Israel. Their headquarters then moved to Limassol on the island of Cyprus, and they also attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny Arwad Island, just off the coast from Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in coordinated military efforts with the Mongols via a new invasion force at Arwad.
In 1302 or 1303, however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian Mamluks in the Siege of Arwad. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land.
With the order’s military mission now less important, support for the organization began to dwindle. The situation was complex, however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom.
The organization’s Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level.[3] The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The order was still not subject to local government, making it everywhere a “state within a state”—its standing army, though it no longer had a well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders.
This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia and the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes.
Arrests, charges and dissolution
In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two orders. Neither was amenable to the idea, but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months.
While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed criminal charges that had been made two years earlier by an ousted Templar and were being discussed by King Philip IV of France and his ministers. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent the king a written request for assistance in the investigation. According to some historians, King Philip, who was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English, decided to seize upon the rumors for his own purposes. He began pressuring the church to take action against the order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.
At dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307 (a date sometimes linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition) King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the phrase: “Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume”
[“God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom”].
Claims were made that during Templar admissions ceremonies, recruits were forced to spit on the Cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent kissing; brethren were also accused of worshiping idols, and the order was said to have encouraged homosexual practices. The Templars were charged with numerous other offences such as financial corruption, fraud, and secrecy.
Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture, and these confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. The prisoners were coerced to confess that they had spat on the Cross:
“Moi, Raymond de La Fère, 21 ans, reconnais que [j’ai] craché trois fois sur la Croix, mais de bouche et pas de cœur” (free translation: “I, Raymond de La Fère, 21 years old, admit that I have spat three times on the Cross, but only from my mouth and not from my heart”).
The Templars were accused of idolatry and were suspected of worshipping either a figure known as Baphomet or a mummified severed head they recovered, amongst other artifacts, at their original headquarters on the Temple Mount that many scholars theorize might have been that of John the Baptist, among other things.
Relenting to Phillip’s demands, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on 22 November 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars’ guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors‘ torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310, having appointed the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.
With Philip threatening military action unless the pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in excelso, which officially dissolved the order, and Ad providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.
As for the leaders of the order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his confession. Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, also retracted his confession and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on 18 March 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer.
According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows : “Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort” (free translation :
“God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death”).
Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.
With the last of the order’s leaders gone, the remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller, which also absorbed many of the Templars’ members.
In effect, the dissolution of the Templars could be seen as the merger of the two rival orders. Templar organizations simply changed their name, from Knights Templar to Order of Christ and also a parallel Supreme Order of Christ of the Holy See in which both are considered the successors.
In September 2001, a document known as the “Chinon Parchment” dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Barbara Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312, as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were “restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church”.
This other Chinon Parchment has been well-known to historians, having been published by Étienne Baluze in 1693 and by Pierre Dupuy in 1751.
The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the order or its rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement’s relative.
Organization
Templar chapel from the 12th century in Metz, France.
Once part of the Templar commandery of Metz, the oldest Templar institution of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Templars were organized as a monastic order similar to Bernard’s Cistercian Order, which was considered the first effective international organization in Europe. The organizational structure had a strong chain of authority. Each country with a major Templar presence (France, Poitou, Anjou, Jerusalem, England, Aragon, Portugal, Italy, Tripoli, Antioch, Hungary, and Croatia) had a Master of the Order for the Templars in that region.
All of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the order’s military efforts in the East and their financial holdings in the West. The Grand Master exercised his authority via the visitors-general of the order, who were knights specially appointed by the Grand Master and convent of Jerusalem to visit the different provinces, correct malpractices, introduce new regulations, and resolve important disputes. The visitors-general had the power to remove knights from office and to suspend the Master of the province concerned.
No precise numbers exist, but it is estimated that at the order’s peak there were between 15,000 and 20,000 Templars, of whom about a tenth were actual knights.
Ranks within the order
Three main ranks
There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars: the noble knights, the non-noble sergeants, and the chaplains. The Templars did not perform knighting ceremonies, so any knight wishing to become a Knight Templar had to be a knight already. They were the most visible branch of the order, and wore the famous white mantles to symbolise their purity and chastity.
They were equipped as heavy cavalry, with three or four horses and one or two squires. Squires were generally not members of the order but were instead outsiders who were hired for a set period of time. Beneath the knights in the order and drawn from non-noble families were the sergeants. They brought vital skills and trades such as blacksmithing and building, and administered many of the order’s European properties. In the Crusader States, they fought alongside the knights as light cavalry with a single horse.
Several of the order’s most senior positions were reserved for sergeants, including the post of Commander of the Vault of Acre, who was the de facto Admiral of the Templar fleet. The sergeants wore black or brown. From 1139, chaplains constituted a third Templar class. They were ordained priests who cared for the Templars’ spiritual needs.
All three classes of brother wore the order’s red cross.
Grand Masters
Templar building at Saint Martin des Champs, France
Starting with founder Hugues de Payens in 1118–1119, the order’s highest office was that of Grand Master, a position which was held for life, though considering the martial nature of the order, this could mean a very short tenure. All but two of the Grand Masters died in office, and several died during military campaigns. For example, during the Siege of Ascalon in 1153, Grand Master Bernard de Tremelay led a group of 40 Templars through a breach in the city walls. When the rest of the Crusader army did not follow, the Templars, including their Grand Master, were surrounded and beheaded.
The Grand Master oversaw all of the operations of the order, including both the military operations in the Holy Land and Eastern Europe and the Templars’ financial and business dealings in Western Europe. Some Grand Masters also served as battlefield commanders, though this was not always wise: several blunders in de Ridefort’s combat leadership contributed to the devastating defeat at the Battle of Hattin. The last Grand Master was Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 by order of King Philip IV.
Behaviour, clothing and beards
Representation of a Knight Templar
Bernard de Clairvaux and founder Hugues de Payens devised the specific code of behaviour for the Templar Order, known to modern historians as the Latin Rule. Its 72 clauses defined the ideal behaviour for the Knights, such as the types of garments they were to wear and how many horses they could have. Knights were to take their meals in silence, eat meat no more than three times per week, and not have physical contact of any kind with women, even members of their own family.
A Master of the Order was assigned:
“4 horses, and one chaplain-brother and one clerk with three horses, and one sergeant brother with two horses, and one gentleman valet to carry his shield and lance, with one horse.”
As the order grew, more guidelines were added, and the original list of 72 clauses was expanded to several hundred in its final form.
The knights wore a white surcoat with a red cross and a white mantle also with a red cross; the sergeants wore a black tunic with a red cross on the front and a black or brown mantle. The white mantle was assigned to the Templars at the Council of Troyes in 1129, and the cross was most probably added to their robes at the launch of the Second Crusade in 1147, when Pope Eugenius III, King Louis VII of France, and many other notables attended a meeting of the French Templars at their headquarters near Paris.
According to their Rule, the knights were to wear the white mantle at all times, even being forbidden to eat or drink unless they were wearing it.
One of the many reported flags of the Knights Templar
The red cross that the Templars wore on their robes was a symbol of martyrdom, and to die in combat was considered a great honour that assured a place in heaven. There was a cardinal rule that the warriors of the order should never surrender unless the Templar flag had fallen, and even then they were first to try to regroup with another of the Christian orders, such as that of the Hospitallers. Only after all flags had fallen were they allowed to leave the battlefield.
This uncompromising principle, along with their reputation for courage, excellent training, and heavy armament, made the Templars one of the most feared combat forces in medieval times.
Although not prescribed by the Templar Rule, it later became customary for members of the order to wear long and prominent beards. In about 1240, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines described the Templars as an “order of bearded brethren”; while during the interrogations by the papal commissioners in Paris in 1310–11, out of nearly 230 knights and brothers questioned, 76 are described as wearing a beard, in some cases specified as being “in the style of the Templars”, and 133 are said to have shaved off their beards, either in renunciation of the order or because they had hoped to escape detection.
Initiation, known as Reception (receptio) into the order, was a profound commitment and involved a solemn ceremony. Outsiders were discouraged from attending the ceremony, which aroused the suspicions of medieval inquisitors during the later trials. New members had to willingly sign over all of their wealth and goods to the order and take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience.[
Most brothers joined for life, although some were allowed to join for a set period. Sometimes a married man was allowed to join if he had his wife’s permission, but he was not allowed to wear the white mantle.
As the chapel of the New Temple in London, it was the location for Templar initiation ceremonies. In modern times it is the parish church of the Middle and Inner Temples, two of the Inns of Court, and a popular tourist attraction.
With their military mission and extensive financial resources, the Knights Templar funded a large number of building projects around Europe and the Holy Land. Many of these structures are still standing. Many sites also maintain the name “Temple” because of centuries-old association with the Templars.
Distinctive architectural elements of Templar buildings include the use of the image of “two knights on a single horse”, representing the Knights’ poverty, and round buildings designed to resemble the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
Modern organizations
The story of the persecution and sudden dissolution of the secretive yet powerful medieval Templars has drawn many other groups to use alleged connections with the Templars as a way of enhancing their own image and mystery. There is no clear historical connection between the Knights Templar, which were dismantled in the Rolls of the Catholic Church in 1309 with the martyrdom of Jacques de Molay, and any of the modern organizations, the earliest emerged publicly in the 18th century.
Beginning in the 1960s, there have been speculative popular publications surrounding the order’s early occupation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and speculation about what relics the Templars may have found there, such as the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant, or the historical accusation of idol worship (Baphomet) transformed into a context of “witchcraft”.
The association of the Holy Grail with the Templars has precedents even in 12th century fiction; Wolfram von Eschenbach‘s Parzival calls the knights guarding the Grail Kingdom templeisen, apparently a conscious fictionalisation of the templarii.
The incredible state sanctioned (unconfirmed but highly likely) execution of Kim Jong-nam has all the ingredients of a 1970’s John le Carré spy novel and the plot seems to thicken by the day as more and more details become available and the world is watching with bated breath to see where the story takes us next.
Kim Jong-nam
According to reports today 28th Feb 2017 – the two women implicated in the killing of the estranged brother of North Korea’s leader will be charged with murder shortly, Malaysia’s prosecutor has says.
Attorney General Mohamed Apandi Ali said the women – from Indonesia and Vietnam – would be formally charged and could face death if convicted.
The women allegedly smeared a deadly chemical over Kim Jong-nam’s face at a Malaysia airport earlier this month.
They have said they thought they were taking part in a TV prank.
“They will be charged in court under Section 302 of the penal code,” the attorney general said, which is a murder charge with a mandatory death sentence if found guilty.
He said no decision had yet been taken on whether to charge a North Korean man, Ri Jong Chol, who is also being held over the killing.
That “depends on the outcome of the police investigation, which is still ongoing”, Mr Apandi was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.
VX is a lethal nerve agent and one of the deadliest chemicals ever created by man. It is classified as a weapon on mass destruction by the UN and can come in liquid, gas or cream form. A victim can be subjected to as little as 10mg and be dead within 15 minutes.
How does it work?
The chemical attacks the body’s nervous system and shuts it down, causing death. Victims may initially feel giddy or nauseous but soon their bodies begin to convulse and they can no longer breathe.
The production and stockpiling of VX exceeding 100 grams (3.53 oz) per year was outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. The only exception is for “research, medical or pharmaceutical purposes outside a single small-scale facility in aggregate quantities not exceeding 10 kg [22 lb] per year per facility”.
The VX nerve agent is the best-known of the V-series of nerve agents and is considered an area denial weapon due to its physical properties. It is far more potent than sarin, another well-known nerve agent toxin, but works in a similar way.
Chemical characteristics
With its high viscosity and low volatility, VX has the texture and feel of motor oil. This makes it especially dangerous, as it has a high persistence in the environment. It is odorless and tasteless, and can be distributed as a liquid, either pure or as a mixture with a clay or talc in the form of thickened agent, or as an aerosol.
VX is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, i.e., it works by blocking the function of the enzymeacetylcholinesterase. Normally, when a motor neuron is stimulated, it releases the neurotransmitteracetylcholine into the space between the neuron and an adjacent muscle cell. When this acetylcholine is taken up by the muscle cell, it stimulates muscle contraction. To avoid a state of constant muscle contraction, the acetylcholine is then broken down to non-reactive substances (acetic acid and choline) by the enzyme acetylcholinesterase. VX blocks the action of acetylcholinesterase, resulting in an accumulation of acetylcholine in the space between the neuron and muscle cell, leading to uncontrolled muscle contraction.
This results in initial violent contractions, followed by sustained supercontraction restricted to the subjunctional endplatesarcoplasm and prolonged depolarizing neuromuscular blockade, the latter resulting in flaccid paralysis of all the muscles in the body. Sustained paralysis of the diaphragm muscle causes death by asphyxiation.
VX can also be delivered in binary chemical weapons which mix in-flight to form the agent prior to release. Binary VX is referred to as VX2,[6] and is created by mixing O-(2-diisopropylaminoethyl) O′-ethyl methylphosphonite (Agent QL) with elemental sulfur (Agent NE) as is done in the Bigeye aerial chemical bomb. It may also be produced by mixing with sulfur compounds, as with the liquid dimethyl polysulfide mixture (Agent NM) in the canceled XM736 8-inch projectile program.
Solvolysis
Like other organophosphorus nerve agents, VX may be destroyed by reaction with strong nucleophiles. The reaction of VX with concentrated aqueous sodium hydroxide results in competing cleavage of the P-O and P-S esters, with P-S cleavage dominating. This is problematic, however, as the product of P-O bond cleavage (named EA 2192) remains toxic. In contrast, reaction with the hydroperoxide anion (hydroperoxidolysis) leads to exclusive cleavage of the P-S bond.
P-S cleavage
NaOH(aq) reacts with VX in two ways. It can cleave VX’s P-S bond, yielding two relatively nontoxic products…
P-O cleavage
…or it can cleave VX’s P-O bond, forming ethanol and EA 2192 (shown in red), which has similar toxicity to VX itself
VX is the most toxic nerve agent ever synthesized for which activity has been independently confirmed. The median lethal dose (LD50) for humans is estimated to be about 10 mg (0.00035 oz) through skin contact and the LCt50 for inhalation is estimated to be 30–50 mg·min/m3.
Nerve agents act by inhibiting the hydrolysis of acetylcholine (ACh) by acetylcholinesterase (AChE). Nerve agents bind to the active site of AChE, rendering it incapable of deactivating ACh. Any ACh that is not hydrolyzed (deactivated) still can interact with the receptor, resulting in persistent and uncontrolled stimulation of that receptor. Thus, the clinical effects of nerve agent poisoning are the result of this persistent stimulation and subsequent fatigue at the muscarinic and nicotinic ACh receptors.
Early symptoms of percutaneous exposure (skin contact) may be local muscular twitching or sweating at the area of exposure followed by nausea or vomiting. Some of the early symptoms of a VX vapor exposure to nerve agent may be rhinorrhea (runny nose) and/or tightness in the chest with shortness of breath (bronchial constriction). Miosis (pinpointing of the pupils) may be an early sign of agent exposure but is not usually used as the only indicator of exposure.
Treatment
When treating VX exposure, primary consideration should be given to removal of the liquid agent from the skin, before removal of the individual to an uncontaminated area or atmosphere. After removal from the area, the casualty (the victim) should be decontaminated by washing the contaminated areas with household bleach and flushing with clean water. After decontamination, clothing should be removed and skin contamination washed away. If possible, decontamination should be completed before the casualty is taken for further medical treatment.
An individual who has received a known nerve-agent exposure, or who exhibits definite signs or symptoms of nerve-agent exposure should immediately be given the antidotes atropine and pralidoxime (2-PAM), as well an injected sedative/antiepileptic such as diazepam. In several nations the nerve agent antidotes are issued for military personnel in the form of an autoinjector such as the United States military Mark I NAAK.
Atropine blocks a subset of acetylcholine receptors known as muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAchRs), so that the buildup of acetylcholine produced by loss of the acetylcholinesterase function has a reduced effect on their target receptor. Pralidoxime (2-PAM) reactivates the acetylcholinesterase enzyme (AChE), thus reversing the effects of VX. VX and other organophosphates block AChE activity by binding to the active site of the enzyme. The phosphate group on VX is transferred from VX to AChE, which inactivates the enzyme and produces an inactive metabolite of VX. Pralidoxime removes this phosphate group.
However, if pralidoxime is not given soon enough, the inactivated enzyme will “age”, resulting in a much stronger AChE-phosphate binding, that pralidoxime cannot reverse.
Diagnostic tests
Controlled studies in humans have shown that minimally toxic doses cause 70–75% depression of erythrocytecholinesterase within several hours of exposure. The serum level of ethyl methylphosphonic acid (EMPA), a VX hydrolysis product, was measured to confirm exposure in one poisoning victim.
History
Discovery
The chemists Ranajit Ghosh La-a and J.F. Newman discovered the V-series nerve agents at the British firm ICI in 1952, patenting diethyl S-2-diethylaminoethyl phosphono- thioate (agent VG) in November 1952. Further commercial research on similar compounds ceased in 1955 when its lethality to humans was discovered. The U.S. went into production of large amounts of VX in 1961 at Newport Chemical Depot.
The discovery occurred when the chemists were investigating a class of organophosphate compounds (organophosphate esters of substituted aminoethanethiols).[16] Like Gerhard Schrader, an earlier investigator of organophosphates, Ghosh found that they were quite effective pesticides. In 1954, ICI put one of them on the market under the trade name Amiton. It was subsequently withdrawn, as it was too toxic for safe use. The toxicity did not go unnoticed, and samples of it had been sent to the British Armed Forces research facility at Porton Down for evaluation.
After the evaluation was complete, several members of this class of compounds became a new group of nerve agents, the V agents. The best-known of these is probably VX, assigned the UK Rainbow Code Purple Possum, with the Russian V-Agent coming a close second (Amiton is largely forgotten as VG). This class of compounds is also sometimes known as Tammelin’s esters, after Lars-Erik Tammelin of the Swedish National Defence Research Institute. Tammelin was also conducting research on this class of compounds in 1952, but did not widely publicize his work. The name is a contraction of the words “venomous agent X”.
Instances of VX use
There was evidence of a combination of chemical agents having been used by Iraq against the Kurds at Halabja in 1988 under Saddam Hussein. Hussein later testified to UNSCOM that Iraq had researched VX, but had failed to weaponize the agent due to production failure. After U.S. and allied forces had invaded Iraq, no VX agent or production facilities were found. However, UNSCOM laboratories detected traces of VX on warhead remnants.
In December 1994 and January 1995, Masami Tsuchiya of Aum Shinrikyo synthesized 100 to 200 grams (3.5 to 7.1 oz) of VX which was used to attack three people. Two people were injured and one 28-year-old man died, who was the first victim of VX ever documented in the world at that time. The VX victim, whom Shoko Asahara had suspected as a spy, was attacked at 7:00 am on December 12, 1994 on the street in Osaka by Tomomitsu Niimi and another AUM member, who sprinkled the nerve agent on his neck.
He chased them for about 100 yards (90 metres) before collapsing, dying 10 days later without ever coming out of a deep coma. Doctors in the hospital suspected at the time he had been poisoned with an organophosphate pesticide, but the cause of death was pinned down only after cult members arrested for the subway attack confessed to the killing. Metabolites of VX such as ethyl methylphosphonate, methylphosphonic acid and diisopropyl-2-(methylthio)ethylamine were later found in samples of the victim’s blood seven months after his murder.
Unlike the cases for sarin gas (the Matsumoto incident and the attack on the Tokyo subway), VX was not used for mass murder.
The authorities further reported that one of the women suspected of applying the nerve agent experienced some physical symptoms of VX-poisoning. The director of a non-proliferation research program of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey stated that VX fumes would have killed the suspected attackers even if they had been wearing gloves, suggesting that the VX was applied as two non-fatal components that would mix to form VX only on the victim’s face.
Worldwide stockpiles
Some countries known to possess VX are the United States, Russia, and Syria.
A Sudanese pharmaceutical facility, the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, was bombed by the U.S. in 1998 acting on information that it produced VX and that the origin of the agent was associated with both Iraq and Al Qaeda. The U.S. had obtained soil samples identified as containing O-ethyl hydrogen methylphosphonothioate (EMPTA), a chemical used in the production of VX which may also have commercial applications. Chemical weapons experts later suggested that the widely used Fonophos organophosphate insecticide could have been mistaken for EMPTA.
In 1969, the U.S. government canceled its chemical weapons programs, banned the production of VX in the United States, and began the destruction of its stockpiles of agents by a variety of methods. Early disposal included the U.S. Army’s CHASE (Cut Holes And Sink ‘Em) program, in which old ships were filled with chemical weapons stockpiles and then scuttled. CHASE 8 was conducted on June 15, 1967, in which the steamship Cpl. Eric G. Gibson was filled with 7,380 VX rockets and scuttled in 2,200 m (7,200 ft) of water off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Incineration was used for VX stockpile destruction starting in 1990 with Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System in the North Pacific with other incineration plants following at Deseret Chemical Depot, Pine Bluff Arsenal, Umatilla Chemical Depot and Anniston Army Depot with the last of the VX inventory destroyed on December 24, 2008.
Stockpile elimination under the Chemical Weapons Convention
Worldwide, VX disposal has continued since 1997 under the mandate of the Chemical Weapons Convention. In fiscal year 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense released a study finding that the United States had dumped at least 112 tonnes (124 short tons) of VX into the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of New York/New Jersey and Florida between 1969 and 1970. This material consisted of nearly 22,000 M55 rockets, 19 bulk containers holding 640 kg (1,400 lb) each, and one M23 chemical landmine.
The Newport Chemical Depot began VX stockpile elimination using chemical neutralization in 2005. VX was hydrolyzed to much less toxic byproducts by using concentrated caustic solution, and the resulting waste was then shipped off-site for further processing. Technical and political issues regarding this secondary byproduct resulted in delays, but the depot completed their VX stockpile destruction in August 2008.
In Russia, the U.S. is providing support for these destruction activities with the Nunn-Lugar Global Cooperation Initiative. The Initiative has been able to convert a former chemical weapons depot at Shchuchye, Kurgan Oblast, into a facility to destroy those chemical weapons. The new facility, which opened in May 2009, has been working on eliminating the nearly 5,400 tonnes (5,950 short tons) of nerve agents held at the former storage complex. However, this facility only holds about 14% of Russian chemical weapons, which are stored at seven sites.
In popular culture
One of the best-known references to VX in popular culture is its use in the 1996 film The Rock, which centers on a threatened VX attack on San Francisco from the island of Alcatraz. The film uses artistic license, notably with VX being ascribed corrosive powers it does not possess, permitting an early scene in which a VX victim is shown with his face melting, rather than dying through asphyxiation. It also shows the hero applying an intracardiac injection of atropine as a defense against VX contamination, rather than the more usual intramuscular injection (e.g. into the thigh) of a combination of atropine and pralidoxime.
In the BBC One spy drama Spooks, an episode named “I Spy Apocalypse” (Series 2, Episode 5) features an EERE (Extreme Emergency Response Exercise) turned real life emergency. A dirty bomb was reported to have exploded in Parliament Square and later the Morningside area of Edinburgh. The bomb was confirmed to have dispersed VX in quantities that exceeded the lethal dose across much of the southeast of England. It is later found that the emergency is a well constructed and believable exercise designed to test the MI5 officers to their limits.
In the CBS American science-based drama television series Eleventh Hour, an episode named Subway (Episode 16); Dr Hood, a science advisor to the FBI is called in to determine the cause of a poison cluster, which is killing people in Philadelphia.
VX agent was featured on the History Channel’s television series Modern Marvels in the episode Deadliest Weapons (Season 11, Episode 10).
Another reference to VX is found in the 2012 art-housedark comedy film It’s a Disaster. The film centers around four couples who gather for a regular couples brunch and later learn about a multi-city VX attack on the United States that may threaten their lives
Ivanov Markov (Bulgarian: Георги Иванов Марков; 1 March 1929 – 11 September 1978) was a Bulgarian dissident writer.
Markov originally worked as a novelist and playwright in his native country, then governed by a communist regime under chairman Todor Zhivkov, until his defection from Bulgaria in 1969. After relocating, he worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the BBC World Service, the US-funded Radio Free Europe, and Germany’s Deutsche Welle. Markov used such forums to conduct a campaign of sarcastic criticism against the incumbent Bulgarian regime, which, according to his wife at the time of death, eventually became “vitriolic” and included “really smearing mud on the people in the inner circles”.
He was assassinated on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin, fired into his leg via an umbrella wielded by someone associated with the Bulgarian secret police. It has been speculated that they asked the KGB for help.
Life in Bulgaria
Georgi Markov was born on 1 March 1929, in Knyazhevo, a Sofia neighbourhood. In 1946 he graduated from the Gymnasium (high school) and began university studies in industrial chemistry. Initially Markov worked as a chemical engineer and a teacher in a technical school. At the age of 19 years he became ill with tuberculosis which forced him to attend various hospitals. His first literary attempts occurred during that time.
In 1957 a novelThe Night of Celsius appeared. Soon another novel The Ajax Winners (1959) and two collections of short stories (1961) were published. In 1962 Markov published the novel Men which won the annual award of the Union of Bulgarian Writers and he was subsequently accepted as a member of the Union, a prerequisite for a professional career in literature. Georgi Markov started working at the Narodna Mladezh publishing house.
The story collections A Portrait of My Double (1966) and The Women of Warsaw (1968) secured his place as one of the most talented young writers of Bulgaria. Markov also wrote a number of plays but most of them were never staged or were removed from theatre repertoire by the Communist censors:
To Crawl Under the Rainbow, The Elevator, Assassination in the Cul-de-Sac, Stalinists, and I Was Him. The novel The Roof was halted in mid-printing since it described as a fact and in allegorical terms the collapse of the roof of the Lenin steel mill. Markov was one of the authors of the popular TV series At Every Milestone which created the character of the Second World War detective Velinsky and his nemesis the Resistance fighter Deyanov.
Despite the ban of some of his works, Georgi Markov had become a successful author. He was among the writers and poets that Zhivkov tried to co-opt and coerce into serving the regime with their works. During this period Markov had a bohemian lifestyle which was unknown to most Bulgarians.
Writer and a dissident
In 1969, Georgi Markov left for Bologna, Italy, where his brother lived. His initial idea was to wait until his status with the Bulgarian authorities improved, but he gradually changed his mind and decided to stay in the West, especially after September 1971 when the Bulgarian government refused to extend his passport. Markov moved to London where he learned English and started working for the Bulgarian section of the BBC World Service (1972). He tried to work for the film industry, hoping for help from Peter Uvaliev, but was unsuccessful.
Later he also worked with Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe. In 1972, Markov’s membership in the Union of Bulgarian Writers was suspended and he was sentenced in absentia to six years and six months in prison for his defection.
His works were withdrawn from libraries and bookshops and his name was not mentioned by the official Bulgarian media until 1989. The Bulgarian Secret Service started Markov’s file under the code name “Wanderer”. In 1974 his play To Crawl Under the Rainbow was staged in London, while in Edinburgh the play Archangel Michael, written in English, won first prize.
The novel The Right Honourable Chimpanzee, coauthored by David Phillips, was published after his death. In 1975 Markov married Annabel Dilke. The couple had a daughter, Alexandra-Raina, born a year later.
Between 1975 and 1978, Markov worked on his In Absentia Reports analysis of life in Communist Bulgaria. They were broadcast weekly on Radio Free Europe. Their criticism of the Communist government and personally of the Party leader Todor Zhivkov made Markov even more an enemy of the regime.
Today, we Bulgarians present a fine example of what it is to exist under a lid which we cannot lift and which we no longer believe someone else can lift… And the unending slogan which millions of loudspeakers blare out is that everyone is fighting for the happiness of the others. Every word spoken under the lid constantly changes its meaning. Lies and truths swap their values with the frequency of an alternating current…
We have seen how personality vanishes, how individuality is destroyed, how the spiritual life of a whole people is corrupted in order to turn them into a listless flock of sheep. We have seen so many of those demonstrations which humiliate human dignity, where normal people are expected to applaud some paltry mediocrity who has proclaimed himself a demi-god and condescendingly waves to them from the heights of his police inviolability…
— Georgi Markov describing life under a totalitarian regime in The Truth that Killed
In 1978, Markov was murdered in London by an operative connected to the KGB and the Bulgarian secret police under Zhivkov. His In Absentia Reports were published in Bulgaria in 1990, after the end of the Communist government.
In 2000, Markov was posthumously awarded the Order of Stara Planina, Bulgaria’s most prestigious honour, for his “significant contribution to the Bulgarian literature, drama and non-fiction and for his exceptional civic position and confrontation to the Communist regime.”
Assassination
Agents of the Bulgarian secret police (Darzhavna Sigurnost; Bulgarian: Държавна сигурност, abbreviated ДС), assisted by the KGB, had previously made two failed attempts to kill Markov before a third attempt succeeded. On 7 September 1978 (the 67th birthday of Todor Zhivkov), Markov walked across Waterloo Bridge spanning the River Thames, and waited at a bus stop to take a bus to his job at the BBC. He felt a slight sharp pain, as a bug bite or sting, on the back of his right thigh.
He looked behind him and saw a man picking up an umbrella off the ground. The man hurriedly crossed to the other side of the street and got in a taxi which then drove away. The event is recalled as the “Umbrella Murder” with the assassin claimed to be Francesco Gullino, codenamed “Piccadilly”.
When he arrived at work at the BBC World Service offices, Markov noticed a small red pimple had formed at the site of the sting he had felt earlier and the pain had not lessened or stopped. He told at least one of his colleagues at the BBC about this incident.
That evening he developed a fever and was admitted to St James’ Hospital in Balham, where he died four days later, on 11 September 1978, at the age of 49. The cause of death was poisoning from a ricin-filled pellet.
Due to the circumstances and statements Markov made to doctors expressing the suspicion that he had been poisoned, the Metropolitan Police ordered a thorough autopsy of Markov’s body. Dr Bernard Riley, a forensic pathologist discovered a spherical metal pellet the size of a pin-head embedded in Markov’s leg.
The pellet measured 1.70 mm (0.07 in) in diameter and was composed of 90% platinum and 10% iridium. It had two holes with diameters of 0.35 mm (0.01 in) drilled through it, producing an X-shaped cavity. Further examination by experts from Robert Gergi and Porton Down showed that the pellet contained traces of toxic ricin. A sugary substance coated the tiny holes creating a bubble which trapped the ricin inside the cavities.
The specially crafted coating was designed to melt at 37 °C (the human body temperature). As the pellet was shot into Markov, the coating melted and the ricin was free to be absorbed into the bloodstream and kill him. Regardless of whether the doctors treating Markov had known that the poison was ricin, the result would have been the same, as there was no known antidote to ricin at the time.
A diagram of a possible umbrella gun
Ten days before the murder, an attempt was made to kill another Bulgarian defector, Vladimir Kostov, in the same manner as Markov, in a Paris metro station. Doctors found the same kind of pellet in his skin. However, it seems that the sugar coating of the pellet protecting the ricin content was damaged during the shot or before, and thus, only a tiny portion of the poison got into his blood, causing only fever.
Kostov reported that the shot came from a man carrying a small bag, but not an umbrella. The main reason for this was the declaration of Markov who saw the umbrella but never said he was shot by it. However, forensic experts declared that the probable “gun” that shot the bullet was probably very sophisticated, another reason to believe in state action.
KGB defectors including Oleg Kalugin and Oleg Gordievsky have confirmed that the KGB arranged the murder, even presenting the Bulgarian assassin with alternatives such as a poisonous jelly to smear on Markov’s skin, but to this day no one has been charged with Markov’s murder, largely because most documents relating to his death were probably destroyed.
The British newspaper The Times has reported that the prime suspect is an Italian named Francesco Gullino (or Giullino) who was last known to be living in Denmark.
A British documentary, The Umbrella Assassin (2006), interviewed people associated with the case in Bulgaria, Britain, Denmark and America, and revealed that the prime suspect, Gullino, is alive and well, and still travelling freely throughout Europe.
There were reports in June 2008 that Scotland Yard had renewed its interest in the case. Detectives were sent to Bulgaria and requests were made to interview relevant individuals.
Copycat attacks
On 11 May 2012, a German man (not identified by name in press reports) died almost a year after being stabbed with an umbrella in the city of Hannover. German police – who noted a resemblance to the Markov case – believe the umbrella was used to inject mercury, and the reported cause of death was mercury poisoning.
Up to 35 people die and 100 others are injured after three trains are involved in a collision during morning rush hour in south London.
On the morning of 12 December 1988, a crowded passenger train crashed into the rear of another train that had stopped at a signal, just south of Clapham Junction railway station in London, and subsequently sideswiped an empty train travelling in the opposite direction. A total of 35 people were killed in the collision, while 484 were injured.
The collision was caused by a signal failure due to a wiring fault. New wiring had been installed, but the old wiring had been left connected at one end, and loose and uninsulated at the other. An independent inquiry, chaired by Anthony Hidden, QC, found that the signalling technician responsible had not been told his working practices were wrong and his work had not been inspected by an independent person. He had also worked a seven-day week for the previous 13 weeks.
Critical of the health and safety culture within British Rail at the time, Hidden’s recommendations included ensuring that work was independently inspected and that a senior project manager be made responsible for all aspects of any major, safety-critical project such as re-signalling work.
British Rail was fined £250,000 for violations of health and safety law in connection with the accident.
On 12 December 1988 the 07:18 from Basingstoke to London Waterloo, a crowded train made up from three four-car 4Vepelectric multiple units, was approaching Clapham Junction when the driver saw the signal ahead of him change from green (“proceed”) to red (“danger”). Unable to stop at the signal, he stopped his train at the next signal and then reported to the signal box by telephone. He was told there was nothing wrong with the signal. At this point the following train, the 06:30 from Bournemouth, made up of a 4-REP and two 4TC multiple units, collided with the Basingstoke train.
A third train, carrying no passengers and made of two four-car 4Vep units, was passing on the adjacent line in the other direction and was hit by the Bournemouth train immediately after the initial impact. The driver of a fourth train, coasting with no traction current, saw the other trains and managed to come to a stop behind the other two and the signal that should have protected them, which was showing a yellow “caution” aspect instead of a red “danger” aspect.
As a result of the collisions, 35 people died, and 69 were seriously injured. Another 415 sustained minor injuries.
Aftermath
The driver of the Basingstoke train was standing by the telephone when his train was pushed forward several feet by the collision. He picked up the receiver and spoke to the signalman, informing him of the collision and asking him to call the emergency services. The signalman immediately switched all the signals he could to ‘danger’, and signalled to the adjacent signal boxes he had an obstruction on the line.
However he had no control over automatic signals, and was not able to stop the fourth train. He then called the Clapham Junction station manager and asked him to call the emergency services. The accident had tripped the high-voltage feed to the traction current. The operator in the near-by Raynes Park electrical control room suspected there had been a derailment and re-configured the supply so that the nearby Wimbledon line trains could still run.
Pupils and teachers from the adjacent Emanuel School were first on the scene of the disaster. They were commended for their service by the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. As the accident was in central London, the first calls to the police came from members of the public, using public telephones and car phones.
The first of the emergency services to arrive was the fire brigade, which was on scene by 08:17. From a bridge over the railway the station officer was able to see the wreckage, and immediately asked for eight fire appliances. At 08:19 and 08:20 he asked for eight ambulances and a surgical team to be sent and at 08:27 declared that it was a major incident.
Ambulances arrived at 08:21 and by 08:36, 12 ambulances had been sent.
The Metropolitan Police helicopter was used to fly doctors to the site. Rescue was hampered because the railway was in a cutting, with metal fence at the top and a wall at the bottom of a wooded slope, so the local authority cut away the fence, trees and shrubs on the slope into which it cut steps. A mobile canteen was organised by the Salvation Army.
The last casualty was taken to hospital at 13:04 and the last body was removed at 15:45.
Inquiry
An initial internal investigation showed that a wiring fault meant that the signal would not show a red danger aspect when the track circuit immediately in front of the signal was occupied. Work associated with the Waterloo Area Resignalling Scheme meant new wiring had been installed, but the old wiring had been left connected at one end, and loose and uninsulated at the other.
An independent inquiry was chaired by Anthony Hidden, QC for the Department for Transport. A 1978 British Rail Southern Region report had concluded that due to the age of the equipment the re-signalling was needed by 1986, however approval was given in 1984 after a report of three wrong side signal failures.
The re-signalling project had been planned assuming more people were available and employees felt that the programme was inflexible and under pressure to get the work done Installation and testing was carried out at weekend during voluntary overtime, the technician having worked a seven-day week for the previous 13 weeks.
The re-wiring had been done a few weeks previously, but the fault had only developed the previous day when equipment had been moved and the loose and uninsulated wire had created a false feed to a relay.
The signalling technician who had done the work had not cut back, insulated nor tied back the loose wire and his work had not been supervised, nor inspected by an independent person as was required. In particular, a wire count that would have identified that a wire had not been removed was not carried out.
There had been inadequate training, assessment, supervision and testing and, with a lack of understanding of the risks of signalling failure, these were not monitored effectively.
Memorial at the site of the crash
Critical of the health and safety culture within British Rail at the time, Hidden recommended that unused signal wires needed to be cut back and insulated, and that a testing plan be in place, with the inspection and testing being done by an independent person. Signal technicians needed to attend refresher courses every five years, and testers needed to be trained and certified. Management was to ensure that no one was working high levels of overtime, and a senior project manager made responsible for all aspects of the project.
Unprotected wrong side signal failures – where the failure permitted a train to go beyond where it was permitted – had to be reported to the Railway Inspectorate. Cab radios, linking driver and signalman, were recommended and to begin installing public address system on existing trains that were not expected to be withdrawn within five years.
Legacy
Testing was mandated on British Rail signalling work and the hours of work of employees involved in safety critical work was limited. Although British Rail was fined £250,000 for breach of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, there was frustration that there was no prosecution for manslaughter. In 1996 the collision was one of the events cited by the Law Commission as reason for new law on manslaughter, resulting in the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.
A memorial marking the location of the crash site is atop the cutting above the railway on Spencer Park, Battersea.
The Basingstoke train stopped at the next signal after the faulty signal, in accordance with the rule book. As of 1999, the rule book had not been changed. If the Basingstoke train had carried on to the next signal then the crash would not have happened, because the Basingstoke train would have been protected by a working track circuit
Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) (Arabic: قوات العمليات الخاصة العراقية) are Iraqispecial forces unit created by coalition forces after the 2003 invasion. The forces, directed by the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service, consist of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Command, which has three brigades subordinate to it. The Counter Terrorism Service (Jihaz Mukafahah al-Irhab, originally translated as Counter Terrorism Bureau) is funded by the Iraq Ministry of Defence.
History
Special operations troops in the old Iraqi army were first established when Colonel Khaleel Jassim Al-Dabbagh built the first royal special units in the name of “Queen Alia Forces” in the mid 1950s. It consisted of Sunni, Shia Arabs and other components of Iraqi population. They were mainly used on an emergency basis to carry out special missions inside of Iraq and outside when the country was in war.
After the Invasion in 2003, Iraqi forces were made redundant by the Invasion forces and because of this, the current Iraqi commando force were recruited from scratch, mostly from Shia Arabs, Kurds and few Sunni.
In November 2005, after training in Jordan with Jordanian Special Forces and US Army Special Forces (“Green Berets”), the Iraqi Special Operations Force had 1,440 men trained, composed into two combat battalions, considered equal in training and combat effectiveness to an average US Army Infantry battalion, and two support battalions.
In March 2008, the force consisted of a single brigade which in turn was made up of an Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Force (ICTF) battalion, three Commando battalions, a support battalion and a special reconnaissance unit.
In the Battle of Mosul that began in October 2016, the special ops forces were correctly expected to be the first division into the city of Mosul, which has been occupied by ISIL since 2014.
On 1 November 2016 the 1st Iraqi Special Forces Division fought its way into the Gogjali quarter of the city, becoming the first Iraqi unit to enter the city during the offensive.
Command structure
The 1st Special Operations Brigade is based in Baghdad and has the 1st, 2nd, and 5th Battalions, a brigade support battalion and a training battalion/Iraqi Special Warfare Center and School. The 1st Battalion is the renamed Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion.
The 1st Brigade is often referred to as the Golden Division, and previously the Golden Brigade.
The 2nd Special Operations Brigade has four commando battalions [1,440 men], which were at Basra, Mosul, Diyala and Al Asad prior to the formation of the 3rd Brigade. The battalions at Basra and Mosul achieved Iraqi Operational Control (IOC) in January 2008 and conducted local operations. Regional CT Centers (RCCs), similar to Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) organizations, were to be established at all four regional commando bases to develop intelligence on terrorist networks in their region.
The 3rd Brigade was established in Basra by spring 2013, following an order by the prime minister in January 2012 that the forces expand by an additional brigade. It consisted of regional commando battalions in Basra, Diwaniya, Najaf, Maysan, Dhi Qar and Muthana provinces, a recce battalion, and a support battalion.
CT pilot training
In February 2008, the Iraqi Air Force, with Coalition Advisors, began night vision goggle (NVG) training as the basis for future counter-terrorism (CT) pilot training. Potential CT pilots and aircrew will undergo NVG flying introduction in order to select the best pilots for advanced CT aviation training as early as April 2008. Selected pilots will continue to log NVG training hours in order to attain a proficiency level that prepares them for Advanced Special Operations specific training as early as late summer 2008.
Once fielded, this special operations aviation capability will reside in the Iraqi Air Force’s 15 Squadron
New claims in a TV programme about the murder of Carl Bridgewater nearly 40 years ago are being examined by police.
Staffordshire Police said officers are “considering the content” of the documentary about the 1978 shooting.
Newspaper boy Carl, 13, died after apparently disturbing a burglary at Yew Tree Farm, near Stourbridge.
Questions about the alibi of initial suspect Bert Spencer, raised in the Channel 4 documentary, are also to be examined by the Home Office.
Mr Spencer was a questioned by police at the time, but has always denied killing Carl.
‘Disposed of shotgun’
An ex-hospital secretary, who provided Mr Spencer with a “cast-iron” alibi on the day of Carl’s killing, told the programme she cannot now prove where he was that day.
In the programme, Mr Spencer’s ex-wife Janet also spoke for the first time about how her then husband disposed of a legally-owned shotgun at the time, and how she had come home to find him washing a green jumper which she never saw again.
Mr Spencer denied her claims.
Police went on to charge suspects, who became known as the Bridgewater Four, after they were arrested in connection with an armed robbery in nearby Halesowen.
Patrick Molloy, James Robinson, and cousins Michael and Vincent Hickey had their convictions overturned after 18 years, in 1997, amid concerns about the police evidence.
The Bridgewater Four was the collective name given to the quartet of men who were tried and found guilty of killing 13-year-old paperboy Carl Bridgewater, who was shot in the head at close range near Stourbridge, England in 1978. In February 1997, after almost two decades of imprisonment, their convictions were overturned on technical grounds. While the Appeals Court noted the continued existence of incriminating evidence, the men were never re-tried, and Bridgewater’s murder remains officially unsolved.
Murder
Carl Bridgewater (January 2, 1965 – September 19, 1978) was shot dead at Yew Tree Farm on the A449 in Staffordshire (approximately three miles north-west of Stourbridge), when he disturbed burglars while delivering a newspaper to the house on 19 September 1978. The elderly couple who lived there were not at home. The paperboy entered the property as he was familiar with the occupants; an open door led him to worry and investigate further. He was subsequently forced into the living room of the house and blasted in the head with a shotgun at point-blank range.
He was already dead when a friend of the house’s occupants found him.
Conviction and sentencing
The Bridgewater Four were Patrick Molloy, James Robinson and cousins Michael Hickey and Vincent Hickey.
They came to police attention following further serious crimes later in 1978. On 24 November, Robinson, Michael Hickey and an unidentified third man carried out an armed robbery at a Tesco supermarket on the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham. Hickey and Robinson raided the safe while the third man held several terrified shoppers at bay with a gun. When the manager tried to intervene a shot was fired over his head.
Six days later, Robinson and the Hickey brothers robbed an elderly couple at Chapel Farm, Romsley, near Halesowen. Vincent Hickey stayed in the car while Robinson and Michael Hickey charged into the house wearing balaclavas, brandishing a shotgun and shouting for money. The victims of this robbery displayed great courage but the robbers got away with £200. Robinson took the lead, hitting one of the victims with the gun but not firing it.
Molloy was the first to be arrested. During questioning which also covered Carl’s murder, Molloy told police that he had been in an upstairs bedroom at Yew Tree Farm while robbing the house when he heard a gunshot downstairs. Shortly afterwards, the other three men were arrested.
All denied committing murder, but three of them were convicted of murder at StaffordCrown Court on 9 November 1979. The fourth, Molloy, was found guilty of manslaughter. They were sentenced on 12 November.
James Robinson (aged 45) and Vincent Hickey (aged 25) were both sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 25 years, which would have kept them behind bars until at least 2004 and the ages of 70 and 50 respectively. Michael Hickey (aged 18) was sentenced to be detained indefinitely at Her Majesty’s pleasure, though it was anticipated he would serve a shorter sentence than the two others convicted of murder due to his age. Patrick Molloy (aged 51) received a 12-year prison sentence on the manslaughter charge, but he died of a heart attack in prison two years later.
Case quashed
An appeal in March 1989 was rejected,but in February 1997, the latest in a number of appeals finally saw the men’s convictions overturned, after the Court of Appeal ruled that the trial had been unfair, due to certain areas of evidence fabricated by police in order to persuade Molloy to make a confession. However, the Appeal Judges noted that in the light of Vincent Hickey’s confessions to being present at the farm where Bridgewater was shot dead:
“we consider that there remains evidence on which a reasonable jury properly directed could convict.”
Despite this, in the light of the judgment, the Crown Prosecution Service had decided not to apply for a retrial involving Vincent Hickey in the public interest nor proceed with an outstanding armed robbery charge against him. Hickey said,
“My conviction has been quashed, so I am absolved and as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it.”
The campaign to free and absolve the four men was led by Michael Hickey’s mother, Ann Whelan, and campaigning journalist Paul Foot. Preparations were made for a case against four police officers in the Staffordshire force on charges of fabricating evidence, but the case was dropped in December 1998.
In a ruling condemned as “sick” by prison campaigners, the Court of Appeal agreed with a Home Office-appointed assessor that the cousins Michael and Vincent Hickey should lose a quarter of loss-of-earnings compensation for their free food and accommodation inside. This has set a precedent which is still being used by the Home Office.
Jim Robinson died on 30 August 2007 of lung cancer at the age of 73.
Bert Spencer
Over the years, convicted murderer Hubert Spencer (born 1940) has been mentioned in the media as a possible suspect for the murder. Spencer, a uniformed ambulance driver from Wordsley and a very close neighbour of Carl’s (only 5 doors away), was investigated by police in the immediate aftermath of the murder, not least because he drove a blue Vauxhall Viva – the same type of car which had been seen at the farm on the afternoon of the murder. Witnesses also said that the driver of the car was a uniformed man. Spencer had a shotgun licence and was regularly allowed to shoot at Yew Tree Farm.
However, he was eliminated from police inquiries after the arrest of the four other suspects. Shortly afterwards, Spencer shot dead 70-year-old Hubert Wilkes at neighbouring Holloway Farm. Like Carl, Wilkes had been shot while sitting on a sofa. Spencer was jailed for life in 1980 and served 15 years before being paroled in 1995.
Spencer is featured in a book, Scapegoat for Murder: The Truth About the Killing of Carl Bridgewater (D&B Publishing), written by true crime author, Simon W. Golding. The author invited criminologistProfessor David Wilson to interview Spencer, and in June 2016, Channel 4 screened a television documentary, Interview with a Murderer.
In the course of the “interview of the year”, Spencer’s daughter revealed that she felt that her father was indeed at Yew Tree Farm on the day of Carl’s killing “and possibly saw something”. A secretary (who was also a friend) who had provided the “cast iron” alibi that he had been “at work all day”, admitted that she could not be sure that Spencer had not left at some point. Prof. Wilson, in his final meeting with Spencer, told him that he saw through Spencer’s “kindly old grandfather schtick”, adding that a P-scan test indicated Spencer was a manipulative and callous psychopath.
The tv documentary concluded with Prof. Wilson interviewing Spencer’s former wife, who had not spoken publicly before. She said that the day after Carl’s murder, Spencer told her he was disposing of his shotgun. She added that, Spencer having chosen to revive the issue to protest his innocence, it seemed likely that the police would reopen the case. [17] Meanwhile, Spencer continues to deny killing Carl Bridgewater
PS. Hope you like my redesign of the England Crest
The red poppy is a symbol of Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future.
Date
Friday 4 November 2016
Location
The Royal British Legion Headquarters
To the governing body of FIFA,
The red poppy is a symbol of Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future. It has no political, religious or commercial meaning.
This small red flower that grew on the devastated battlefields of the First World War is a solemn reminder of the cost of war and the price of peace. The red poppy is worn so that we never forget the commitment and sacrifices of the Serving, never forget those who need help to live on through the consequences of war, and always remember our troubled world needs reconciliation and peace.
Since 1921 the Legion has protected the red poppy from political or partisan misuse and ensured it remains a symbol that can be worn with pride by those of all ages, backgrounds, and political and religious beliefs.
Many nations respect and honour the sacrifices of their Armed Forces and the red poppy is an international symbol worn around the world. Each year 1.5 million poppies are sent to 50 countries worldwide, there are distinct red poppies worn in Canada, Australia and New Zealand for Remembrance, and in France they wear the bluet. We can see no reason why this simple symbol cannot be worn by players at international football matches should they choose to.
The poppy represents sacrifices made in the defence of freedom, and so the decision to wear it must be a matter of personal choice. We would never insist upon it, as to do so would be contrary to the spirit of Remembrance and all that the poppy stands for.
This year the Legion is asking the nation to rethink Remembrance when they wear their poppy, and recognise that all generations of our Armed Forces community, from the Second World War through to the present day, need our support. The poppy is as much to support the future of the living, as to honour the memory of the fallen and we thank the football associations of the home nations who have helped us carry this message to the millions of football fans watching their matches this Remembrance period.
We ask you, FIFA, in the strongest terms that you rethink your approach to remembrance and the use of the poppy, and permit players to honour the commitment and sacrifices of the Armed Forces.
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