Alleged MI6 death plot exposed
By Amil Khan Middle East Times staff

YVONNE RIDLEY

"..A British journalist who was captured for 10 days by the Taliban last September claims her own government tried to convince Taliban officials that she was a spy. Yvonne Ridley, who works for the Sunday Express and has written a book about her ordeal, says that her death would have been a public relations success for the British government in the face of anti-war critics.

In her book In the hands of the Taliban, Ridley relates how she, like nearly 3,000 other journalists, arrived in Pakistan while the rubble at ground zero in New York was still smouldering.

American President George W. Bush had just told the world that he would consider those harboring Osama Bin Laden, the prime suspect, as guilty as the man himself.

Bush had clearly been referring to the Taliban and no one doubted that the mysterious semi-medieval group would face the full extent of American wrath if it didn't hand over a man its leaders considered an "honored guest."

Talking to the Middle East Times, Ridley explained that she was unwilling to be "spoon-fed" information by the authorities. Instead of hearing second-hand reports from fleeing refugees and aid workers about conditions inside Afghanistan, she decided to venture into the country to see what was happening beyond the Pakistani border.

The Taliban had thrown out Western reporters days earlier, but the BBC's John Simpson had sneaked into the country disguised as a woman wearing a black burkha. Ridley attempted to do the same but was discovered by a Taliban patrol outside the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

As the news of Ridley's capture flashed across the globe, the guessing began immediately. What would the Taliban do with a female Western reporter?

Only days after the attacks of September 11, the American and British media had been full of stories about the Taliban's harsh treatment of women and their distrust of Westerners. With this in mind, many commentators predicted the worst for Ridley.

Shortly after Ridley's capture, the Taliban announced that they suspected her of espionage and would be carrying out an investigation.

Newspapers in Britain began talking about Ridley as if she were already dead. Her career and life were highlighted in the press. Some writers criticized her decision to enter Afghanistan on the basis that as a single mother with a young child she had more pressing concerns than career progression.

In many people's minds Ridley was a lost cause. Accused of spying by the Taliban, it seemed as if it was only a matter of time before she would be executed.

Ridley says that the "demonization" of the Taliban in the American and British press after September 11 made it seem to most people that she would not be leaving Afghanistan alive.

However, according to Ridley, she was treated relatively well, with "respect" and "courtesy." She says, "The Taliban never harmed me physically. They tried instead to use mind games to get the information they wanted."

On the fourth day the guards left Ridley to herself. "This was the most terrifying time," she says. "I thought they had made up their minds that I was a spy."

On that day, the Taliban had received a file. The same file had been sent to several journalists, including the London offices of the independent Arabic TV news channel Al Jazeera.

The file contained documents related to Ridley's taxes and income as well as documents that stated she was an MI6 agent and her ex-husband was an agent for Mossad, the Israeli security service.

According to Ridley, some of the documents were authentic while others were fabricated. On her release, she was able to fully examine the copy of the file that was sent to Al Jazeera and realized that it also contained family photos that she had in her home in London.

"It had to have come from British intelligence," she told the Middle East Times.

The reason Ridley claims British intelligence would try to convince the Taliban that she was a spy had to do with pubic opinion in Britain..."

"..
"A friend told me on my return, 'if you had come home in a box it would have silenced the anti-war critics'," she said.

However, if that was the intention behind giving the file to the Taliban, it failed. Ridley says the Taliban authorities understood that they were being duped, that someone wanted them to harm her and finally realized that she was, after all, only a journalist.

Also, Ridley's editors were in contact with Taliban officials attempting to prove that she was a journalist. They provided her captors with some of her previous articles as proof.

Ridley says the British government failed to provide her with adequate assistance. When her release was finally agreed, the Taliban agreed to hand her over at the Pakistani border to waiting British officials.

Ridley says the British authorities complicated the process and jeopardized her safety by not sending any officials to the border. After some confusion, Ridley was released to Pakistani officials.

The British Foreign Office denied Ridley's version of events. The British High Commission in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, "acted tirelessly on her [Ridley's] behalf," a spokeswoman told the Middle East Times.

She then went on to explain that High Commission staff had offered to go to the border post for the handover but the High Commissioner, Hilary Synott, had deemed the area too risky. The spokeswoman added with a twinge of resentment, "She thanks so many people in her book, it's a shame she can't bring herself to acknowledge our role [in her release]."

However, the spokeswoman was unwilling to comment on MI6's involvement. "We don't comment on intelligence matters no matter how absurd we think the claims being made are," she said.

Mark Laffey, a lecturer in international politics at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, told the Middle East Times that he was cynical about Ridley's claims. Talking about a plan to get a British journalist killed for public relations purposes Laffey said, "I doubt ideas of that sort reached the level of conscious discussion… In any case, the U.K. and the U.S. had decided on their course of action; a small shift in public opinion was not going to make a difference either way."

"It would be better to have her alive and back… She would have valuable information on the Taliban's structure and morale, among other things," thought Thomas Withington, of King's College, London.

Withington, a doctoral student on the Taliban, is one of Britain's leading authorities on the former government of Afghanistan. He said it would be difficult to see why MI6 would want Ridley dead.

He also pointed out that if the British government wanted to create an anti-Taliban feeling in the country, "it could just release some of the pictures of massacres and public executions carried out by the Taliban. You can find these on the Internet."

Al Jazeera's Britain and Ireland correspondent, Nasir Bedri, was one of the journalists who received 'the Ridley file'. He told the Middle East Times, that the information and documents in it had been collected by "intelligence sources" but it was "very difficult to figure out if she was a spy or not… it's very difficult to prove she was framed… You just end up with her word against theirs."

However, Bedri had a different view from Laffey about the British public's reaction to the bombing in Afghanistan. The impression that the vast majority of the public supported the bombings was very misleading – "news organizations were given an editorial line by the government. They became a propaganda tool," he said.

One thing was clear in Bedri's mind: "Whoever released the file had political aims."

Two days after speaking to the Middle East Times, Ridley was attacked in central London. She was hit on the back of the head and her bag, containing money, personal effects, her passport and notes for a story related to the Middle East, was snatched.

She told the Middle East Times: "I would like to think it was a plain old mugging…"