12 Nov 2007

EU Bioterrorism Expert Claims Harassment by Western Intelligence Forces

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Jill Dekker

Daily Mail:

An EU expert on biological warfare has told how she fears ending up ‘dead in the woods’ like scientist Dr David Kelly after an alleged campaign of intimidation by members of MI6 and the CIA.

Jill Dekker, a bio-defence expert based in Brussels, has reported a string of sinister incidents – including the parking of a hearse outside her house – after making a speech critical of British and American policy in the Middle East.

Her claims are included in a new book by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker which argues that Dr Kelly was murdered to silence his criticism of the grounds for going to war in Iraq. …

She was placed under the protection of the Belgian government after reporting a series of sinister incidents earlier this year. …

Dr Dekker says the ‘intimidation’ against her started in March, as she was flying to Florida to give a speech on Syria’s weapons programme to an intelligence summit. She says she was subjected to a ‘heavy-handed’ interrogation by a man she suspects of being a British intelligence operative.

She believes the speech made her powerful enemies because she argued that billions of dollars spent by the US government to develop a smallpox vaccine has been wasted because scientists – including British experts – have used a different viral strain to the one she believes is being developed in Damascus.

If this is true, it means governments would have no way of protecting the public against the use of the virus by terrorists or rogue states.

She also believes that Iraq did have a biological weapons capacity which was all shipped to Syria before the outbreak of war.

She argues this was known, but was concealed from the public because the real purpose of the war was not to target weapons of mass destruction but to topple Saddam Hussein and gain a strategic foothold in the region.

When she returned to her home in Belgium after the speech she said she was subjected to an overt campaign of surveillance and harassment, including being continuously followed on foot and having cars parked outside her house with the headlights on.

On one occasion, she says she found a hearse parked outside her house with the drivers ‘staring straight ahead.’ When she approached, it sped off and she pursued it, taking photographs as evidence. …

Last night, Mr Baker said he believed Dr Dekker could have made enemies by exposing a fallacy at the heart of military action against Iraq.

“If the war was really about WMD, then to be consistent we should also invade Syria,” he said.

“Otherwise, it suggests that it was more about giving Saddam a bloody nose.”

All this sounds a great deal like the usual leftwing Hollywood meme of the innocent person of integrity targeted by the sinister representatives of corrupt government trying to cover something up, but her contention that Saddam’s WMD were shipped to Syria is probably perfectly true, and I certainly agree that the Bush Administration’s failure to invade Syria as well in pursuit of those WMD is very puzzling.

This post falls into the “making a note of it… just for the record” category.

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One Feedback on "EU Bioterrorism Expert Claims Harassment by Western Intelligence Forces"

Mr. Phelps

Not a specialist of the trade, but I find the plot a bit much, after I read the whole thing which brings its share of other interesting details.

If Jill Dekker finds the technique of her “guardian angels” reminiscent of Johnny English, then let me suggest that the idea of the theatrical hearse might have been rather picked up in the opener of the TV series The Prisoner (starring Patrick McGoohan) before being included in a story à la Henry Verneuil and Gilles Perrault, all this in the pure style of the espionage movies of the late 60s early 70s.

Ha! Wait and let’s see whence the resounding case will come–with a story’s title such as L’Effroyable imposture – Part II, perhaps?–if ever there is one.

P.S.: Hey, nice picture! She looks almost like Barbara Bain, my partner in Mission: Impossible.



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