Spying for Israel: Starmer's secret surveillance of Gaza caught on camera

Описание: Britain's air force is spying on Gaza and sharing intelligence with Israel. Declassified caught one of the planes on camera for the first time as it took off from a colonial-era base on Cyprus. Naledi Pandor, who was foreign minister of South Africa when it accused Israel of genocide, said Britain is colluding in crimes against humanity.

Read our investigation in full: https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-s...

Support us from £3 a month: https://www.declassifieduk.org/join/

00:00 Intro
01:30 Spy flights explained
02:56 Naledi Pandor
03:44 Filming in Cyprus
05:34 Shadow takes off
06:50 Hostage rescue?
08:40 David Cameron grilled
10:24 Decolonisation

Jutting out from behind a line of trees on Cyprus’ southern peninsula, a twin propeller plane prepares for an early evening take off.

With its red, white and blue livery, ZZ507 looks more like a VIP shuttle than a military intelligence platform.

And yet this is one the Royal Air Force’s most highly classified assets: the Shadow R1.

Speaking at an arms fair, air commodore Ian Gale stressed “when you have an aeroplane whose output that we guard very, very carefully, you’ve got to know that what it’s doing is absolutely crucial.”

Throughout the last year, the Shadow fleet has been conducting almost daily surveillance over Gaza, 225 miles away. The trips are flown by the RAF’s 14 Squadron – nicknamed “the Crusaders”.

Their missions are partially visible on flight tracking websites, which log hundreds of sorties heading to and from the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Naledi Pandor was South Africa’s foreign minister when it accused Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

She told Declassified that such flights are “collusion with what has been called a crime against humanity”.

Until now, no pictures have emerged of the Shadow fleet operating from their base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, where Britain retains three per cent of its former colony for military purposes.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) released footage of RAF aid drops on Gaza and bombing raids on Yemen as those planes took off from Akrotiri.

But it has declined to publish any images of these Shadow surveillance operations.

Even the family of a British aid worker who was killed by Israel was denied access to footage from a Shadow plane that was in the air as the massacre unfolded.

So Declassified hired an experienced cameraman in Cyprus, Aleksandar Ljubojevic, and tasked him with gaining the first images of the flights.

Ljubojevic has worked with some of Britain’s biggest television networks and was previously invited by the MoD to film inside Akrotiri.

However no such invitation was available to Declassified.

Stake out

After making several enquiries to the MoD, its press office eventually conceded it could not stop media filming on public land outside the base.

Armed with this information, Ljubojevic set out at the crack of dawn last Monday and found a spot about a mile from the runway to set up his tripod.

Military police from what Britain calls the Sovereign Base Area Administration came to check his identity, but allowed him to film after seeing the email we had received from the MoD press office.

That day, the base hummed with activity. Chinook helicopters, an American Black Hawk, RAF Typhoon fighter jets and a Voyager refuelling tanker all came and went.

Yet as the sun set over Cyprus, the Shadow was nowhere to be seen.

And then a light suddenly flashed on the runway. It was about to take off.

Ljubojevic panned carefully as the Shadow’s distinctive tail poked above the trees, and then refocused as the plane climbed away from Akrotiri.

A row of sensors sticking up from the fuselage silhouetted against the twilight, as the pilot banked south east towards Gaza.

Once there, “they’ll see absolute destruction,” Pandor commented. “There’s been a complete annihilation of any form of civilised infrastructure for Palestinian people.”

What exactly the crew recorded that night remains a state secret

Read on: https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-s...