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THE BETRAYAL OF FLIGHT 149(The Mail on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The Boeing 747 had only landed to refuel. It was the middle of the night in Kuwait City and many passengers had used the break to get off the plane and stretch their legs. But 12-year-old Jennifer Chappell remained on board with her parents and older brother. She was sitting in a window seat in business class staring out at the darkened airport when she saw three fighter planes flying very fast and low. Something dropped from the bottom of one of them. For a brief second Jennifer thought she might have witnessed a mid-air collision. Then there was a loud bang. The whole plane shook violently. People started shouting and running down the aisles. Another passenger, Gabriel Chardin, recalls seeing two Mig-23 jets fly past the windows, a high-speed blur, but so close he could clearly make out the markings on the wings: Iraqi Air Force. 'There was a very bright white light: the planes were shooting at the control tower. Bombs were falling and exploding,' he says. On board, a stewardess shouted at the passengers to leave their personal possessions and evacuate. Explosions started going off around the airport. The 747 had just been filled with aviation fuel - 57,000 gallons of it - to cover the rest of the flight, first to Madras, then on to Kuala Lumpur. One hit could turn them into a giant fireball. John Chappell and his children - John, 14, and Jennifer - grabbed their stuff and ran off the plane into the terminal. His wife, Maureen, got a whiff of cordite as she exited the plane. Maureen tried to calm her daughter, but all around was panic. One passenger was hysterical, sobbing, saying over and over again, 'We're going to die'. The dull thud of bombs could be heard close by, mixed with the sound of jet aircraft swooping overhead. In the distance, the passengers could see tanks and infantry moving around the airfield. Iraq had invaded Kuwait, as Saddam Hussein had been threatening to do for months, and as the CIA had predicted in a briefing to President George Bush a week earlier. The 200,000 troops and tanks that had gathered on the Iraq-Kuwait border were now an occupying army, and in the process of annexing Kuwait at breakneck speed. It was August 2, 1990. Kuwait was a popular refuelling point and normally the terminal would be heaving with passengers and staff. But that day it was deserted. The departure board showed that all flights in and out of the country had been cancelled. Other than the 18 crew and 367 passengers, 11 of whom were children, who had come off the British Airways flight, and those who were waiting to board for its next leg, there was no one else in sight. The passengers were in the middle of a war zone, and they were alone. Some recalled a group of nine young men who sat at the back of the plane. These men - who it later transpired belonged to a secret MI6 unit known as Inc - had got off as soon as the plane had landed. Now they were missing. But the terror of the first few hours in Kuwait would be nothing compared to the subsequent four months endured by many of the passengers. Within hours of arriving, they were taken by Iraqi troops to hotels around the airport and put under guard. Saddam had just acquired 376 Western hostages. After two weeks, the passengers were split up and taken to more than 70 locations around Iraq and Kuwait, to be used as human shields by Saddam. Conditions were appalling. Many lived close to starvation. Women - and men - were raped. Some suffered serious physical assaults. They were constantly threatened, some taken to be executed and only returned to their 'cells' at the last minute. Many had to watch Kuwaiti civilians severely beaten, even murdered, by troops. The Chappells ended up at the IBI camp, named after the contractor that built it. They lived in fear that every day would be their last. Another passenger, a 41-year-old surgeon from Bristol, Dr Paul Dieppe, and the cabin services director of the plane, Clive Earthy, were held with a small group in bungalows on the University of Kuwait campus, near the docks, a strategic location. At one stage, their guards began digging a hole and told Earthy they had instructions to shoot the hostages and bury them if the US and Britain tried to retake Kuwait. Many passengers have suffered longterm-health problems or psychological issues. There have been suicides and attempted suicides, according to a secret dossier on the horrors experienced by the human shields. Studies published in the British Medical Journal highlighted the trauma of the victims - a trauma that has been almost totally ignored. More than half of the human shields have been unable to sustain careers. Financial problems have caused loss of homes, and depression has affected family lives and relationships. Jennifer Chappell was an outgoing girl with a good school record and a bright future when she boarded BA149. She celebrated her 13th birthday in captivity. The ordeal took away her youth and led to years of psychological problems and counselling. She has tried to kill herself several times. Despite all the suffering, nobody has managed to answer this question - why, when other flights going into Kuwait that day had been cancelled, was BA149 allowed to land? When I heard about BA149, I became intrigued by persistent rumours that undercover secret agents had used the civilian aircraft to land in Kuwait. I started tracking down some of the hostages including the flight captain, members of his crew, the Chappells, Dr Dieppe, and many other passengers. Their stories were deeply moving. I began to wonder why there has never been a public investigation into BA149. Tory and Labour governments have evaded questions about it. A speech at the time to the House of Commons by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was full of misinformation. The plane was mysteriously blown up just before Kuwait was liberated and a report on the full horrors suffered by the human shields, known as Operation Sandcastle, has been kept secret despite demands from MPs for its publication. As I investigated further, the mystery deepened. I spoke to lawyers representing many of the victims. A Texan, Bill Neumann, acting for some of the American victims, discovered that British military personnel in Kuwait had been briefed about a possible invasion days before August 2. If the British Government was briefing military personnel about an invasion, why did they allow a civilian plane to land? But it was not the only mysterious circumstance surrounding the flight. Neumann was deeply surprised to learn that he could not get a passenger list for BA149. 'BA said they didn't have it,' says Neumann, 'which was suspicious, especially in an age of computers. Corporations keep documents such as that for some period of time.' Neumann took hundreds of pages of depositions from BA employees. These document embarrassing actions taken by BA staff, such as the decision by Laurie O'Toole, a BA manager in Kuwait, to put his wife and children on the last flight out that very day. The information in itself is not enough to indict the airline, but does not make good reading. The airline made no admission of liability, but it did pay sums in excess of GBP100,000 to Neumann's clients. BA staff may have made mistakes, but in truth the airline had been badly advised. On August 1, 1990, BA executives in Kuwait were briefed by the British embassy. Tony Paice, a senior embassy official, said there would be no invasion and that it was OK to fly. That same day, another embassy official, John Raine, told the press gathered in Kuwait that there would be no full-scale invasion, perhaps just some sabre rattling. Paice was later identified in court papers as MI6's Kuwait station chief, while Raine has subsequently been listed as an MI6 agent in documents posted on the internet, allegedly by former MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson. Why was BA told it was safe to fly? Surely it had to be because there was something or someone on the flight that British Intelligence services wanted to get into Kuwait. I had plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting this was the case but nothing concrete. Then in 1997, I met an SAS contact who said he had been involved in a secret operation to get a team of elite soldiers on to BA149. The team was an ultra-secret group, at that time called Inc, short for Increment (a fitting name as its job was over and above normal SAS duties), run by MI6. He said he couldn't talk about the group, it was too dangerous. But he introduced me to a member of Inc, whom I met at a pub in Hereford, near the SAS base. This was one of the top men. He told me he helped to organise the BA149 mission and provided various details. But he said he could not go public, that he would go to jail. I have subsequently spoken to two other people involved in the intelligence operation. One said that he had only been persuaded to talk to me because he wanted the passengers on the flight to understand why they had been put at risk. The success of the mission, he said, saved thousands of lives when the Allies invaded Kuwait the following year. 'I feel strongly for the passengers as they were innocents, but I believe it was an operation that had to be done and it was executed in the only manner it could have been done,' he said. No details about the various members of Inc who spoke to me can be published - in a close-knit team of only a dozen or so it would be obvious who they were - but their testimony is compelling and shocking in equal measure. Even so, I knew that if I was to make the information public I needed concrete proof of what I was being told. It has taken me years to gather all the evidence. As part of my investigation I have interviewed four members of Inc a number of times and carefully checked their accounts against the testimony of the scores of passengers to whom I have spoken. I have seen secret documents confirming the existence of Inc and I have interviewed many independent sources, such as Edmund Ciriello, a former CIA agent who was on the ground in Saudi Arabia in August 1990. He learned about the Inc mission from MI6, who he was then working with. This is the story I have been told. At the end of July 1990, MI6 was working on the basis that Iraq would invade Kuwait. It was crucial that MI6 had access to intelligence from the area, so senior officers handpicked a team for a covert mission. Each one was called in for a special briefing. Their task was to set up secret observation posts in Kuwait and, liaising with the embassy, to spy on Iraqi troop movements and deployments after the impending Iraqi invasion. Most of them were not traditional soldiers and spies but trained operatives from a group that has had many names but was then known as Inc. 'It became obvious from human intelligence coming in via Iraq, Nasa and CIA sources that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait. Inc was considered the best resource for the job,' explained the organiser of the team. Inc was, and still is, one of the British Government's best-kept secrets. It is a group designed for so-called 'black ops', where soldiers and spies are sent on missions that the Government can deny all knowledge of. Inc is drawn from the SAS, the SBS (the Special Boat Service), spies of MI5, MI6 and the Intelligence and Signals Corps. All its members resign existing MOD and government jobs and formally join the private sector. Others who have left their units for one reason or another, sometimes because of injuries, are recycled into Inc. This group are known as 'Dunlops' (as in tyres, retreads). Inc was designed to provide ministers with perfect deniability. Members of Inc are paid from untraceable overseas bank accounts and they are promised immunity from prosecution in British courts for any possible crimes committed while overseas. Most Inc missions are run by MI6. In August 1990, MI6 wanted to use Inc for gatherering information. But MI6 first had to find a way to get the team into Kuwait. The organiser told me that 'BA149 was viewed as the most expedient way of getting in, that would arouse the least suspicion.' The team of nine men were to travel on the plane undercover as engineers and surveyors. 'There was never any intention of putting lives at risk,' he insisted. 'With the intelligence we had then, we believed that the team could land in Kuwait and still allow the plane to fly on to its final destination a full 24 hours before the invasion.' The plane and its passengers, emphasised the organiser, as well as other members of Inc I have spoken to, should never have been in any danger - but, as events proved, the Iraqis invaded earlier than expected. Republican Guard troops crossed the northern border into Kuwait four hours before the BA flight landed. The nine-man team that arrived on BA149 were as surprised as the passengers that the invasion had already started. Despite that, they succeeded in getting their equipment off the plane and met up with other MI6 operatives working undercover as baggage handlers. The team left the airport as Iraqi troops arrived, then split up into smaller units, hiding in flats around the country, observing troop movements. One two-man team was caught but their cover story held and they joined the population of Westerners in captivity. A second team went south to the Kuwait-Saudi border and delivered valuable intelligence on Iraqi troop movements. London and Washington were concerned that Saddam's army would invade Saudi Arabia, giving control of nearly half the world's oil. The team reported that the Iraqis were, for the moment, adopting defensive, rather than offensive positions, at the border. When one of the men in this team became seriously ill with food poisoning, they had to be rescued by a US helicopter and taken to the USS Antietam, a destroyer in the Gulf. British military sources have denied any knowledge of the rescue but it was confirmed to me by Lawrence Eddingfield, the captain of the Antietam at the time, but since retired. Two other teams worked undercover in and around Kuwait city for months, delivering intelligence for the Allies' campaign 'Desert Storm', which liberated Kuwait by February 1991. But while the operation was an intelligence triumph, it delivered the passengers and crew of BA149 into Iraqi hands. The months that followed were a personal hell for the hostages. Fourteenyearold John Chappell recalls being taken as a hostage to an airport hotel with his family. From the window, they watched a war unfolding. Iraqi tanks drove straight through the car park below, rolling over cars, crushing them if they got in the way. People in the cars were desperately trying to get out. The Iraqis did not seem to care. Chappell saw a Kuwaiti soldier running from the mayhem. Two Iraqi soldiers appeared and pointed their automatic weapons at the running man. They fired, emptying their magazines. The Kuwaiti soldier spun, then turned as his chest exploded. He fell to the ground, dead. Later, the hostages were moved to other locations. One bus was met by Iraqi conscripts. A stewardess was the last person on the bus when an Iraqi soldier trapped her on board and raped her. When cabin services director Clive Earthy found out, he demanded to see the senior Iraqi officer, who was furious when Clive told him what happened. The soldier was picked out in an identity parade and taken away. For the rest of the day, he was kept outside in the baking sun, hands tied behind his back, head bowed, in full view of many of the passengers and crew now held in their rooms. Shortly before dusk, the man was hauled away, towards the beach. Minutes later, shots rang out. The crew were informed that the soldier had been executed. Military justice. Many passengers and crew were forced to take part in televised propaganda stunts where they met Saddam, who expressed 'concern' for their wellbeing. It was during one such appearance that Saddam horrified the world by patting and stroking the head of a British boy, five-year-old Stuart Lockwood. At the end of August, Saddam announced that he would release all women and children. Maureen Chappell and her children found themselves on a flight back to Britain. But John was left in captivity for a further three months. In December, after nearly four months of captivity, Saddam abruptly released the remaining Western hostages. The world soon forgot about their plight, the news was dominated by the plans for war, as George Bush assembled his grand coalition to retake Kuwait. But no one on BA149 forgot - or forgave. The British passengers on the plane have not received a penny of compensation for the ordeal they went through. There has never been a public enquiry into what happened. And none of them really understand why they were put in so much obvious danger. Liberal Democrat Norman Baker MP is so concerned about the situation that he has scheduled a press conference for tomorrow in the House of Commons, in which he will demand a public enquiry. For some, an admission of culpability after all these years on behalf of the British Government may go some way to healing the wounds. For others, it will be all too late. Stephen Davis is a veteran foreign correspondent, investigative reporter and contributor to the flagship US current affairs programme '60 Minutes'. His groundbreaking work led to the first TV interview with former MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson. His book 'The Secret Of Flight 149' will be published later this year ESCAPE TO FREEDOM - THE PILOT'S STORY Not all the BA149 passengers and crew were taken prisoner. Richard Brunyate, the pilot, spent the early days in captivity reassuring the passengers, but at night he could not sleep. His family had lived in Baghdad and his father Jack had mixed in senior political and social circles. But he had run foul of a fast-rising politician from Tikrit. The man's name was Saddam Hussein. Brunyate knew that he had an unusual, and very recognisable, name and lived in fear that his family's run-in with Saddam would cost him his life. Brunyate managed to make contact with the Kuwaiti resistance and escape with five other crew members. They got into a vehicle parked outside the hotel and drove out of the car park. They reached a safe house without meeting any checkpoints. Brunyate sent two colleagues back to the hotel to get more of the crew but they ran into a new checkpoint set up at the hotel. The two men were ordered out of their vehicle at gunpoint. Coolly, they asked the Iraqis if they could park their car. The soldiers said yes so they drove it round a corner, abandoned it and walked as quickly as they dared back to the safe house. Brunyate had made contact with a key resistance leader called Fahad, who risked everything to help them, despite his brother having been killed in the very early days of the invasion. It was an agonising time - all the time Brunyate expected to be caught. He noted his anxiety in his diary. On August 18 he wrote: 'the good news is that the apartment we are hiding in has air conditioning, running water and plenty of food. We seem to have fallen on our feet. However, I am very nervous and constantly worried at the decision I have made. Sleep is difficult. There is a lot of shooting in the area, with tracer fire lighting up the night sky.' And on August 20: 'I have slept badly again. I am plagued by nightmares and all of us wait for the knock on the door which would end our freedom. I worry for Fahad, who is extraordinarily brave.' At the end of August Brunyate heard on Dubai TV that Saddam Hussein was letting female and child hostages go. Brunyate managed to hook up the women in his group with a convoy leaving for Baghdad - and from there back to Britain. Brunyate and his crew men however had to elude capture for a further three months, when Saddam allowed all Westerners home. Copyright 2006 The Mail on Sunday. |