August 2010 Archives

After a week of speculation the Attorney General has refused to release secret documents about the death of Iraqi weapons inspector Dr David Kelly.
This decision comes after leading medical experts, Dr Kelly's family and even members of the ruling coalition government, called for a full inquest into his alleged "suicide".
The weight of medical evidence against the official version of his death is staggering, and conspiracy theories abound over the possible involvement of the government, rogue MI6 agents or even Iraqi death squads.
Here is our original detailed look at the conspiracy theory surrounding Dr Kelly's death, make up your own mind as to where the truth lies.....

In 1999 Russia stood at a crossroads.
The newly capitalist nation was beset by internal unrest, torn apart by rivalries between billionaire oligarchs redrawing the map for their own commercial interests and constantly under threat of terrorism from Chechen rebels seeking an independent homeland.
Into this chaotic scene stepped Vladimir Putin, now familiar as the shirtless, hunting, fishing, Russian ironman who would rule his country like a modern day Tsar.
Back then he was a determined, ambitious, former commander in the FSB, the new secret service fast gaining a reputation as the KGB of the 21st century.
Putin's bid for power was based on his tough stance on Chechnya, his no-nonsense approach to terrorism, and his promise to rebuild a strong Russia from the ashes of its post-USSR breakdown.
As President Boris Yeltsin was facing the boot over corruption allegations, a string of apartment bombings rocked the cities of Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk - killing 300 people and injuring over a thousand.
The attacks would be the catalyst for a second war against the Chechen rebels, but more than that they precipitated a massive shift in the base of power, and coincided the emergence of the previously unheralded Putin as Russia's pre-eminent political force. Within a year Putin had amassed a huge base of voters, and was popularly elected President for his handling of the war.
But the story did not end there.
With the Putin regime firmly in place, dissident former spies, including Alexander Litvinenko, who died in agony from polonium poisoning in London in 2006, came forward to warn that the bombings were a covert FSB operation.
Litvinenko and others suggested that the secret service had carried out the attacks as part of a false flag conspiracy to paint the Chechen rebels as the culprits and launch the war which would bring Putin to power.
As the whistle blowers began to be silenced, the conspiracy theory only grew stronger.
The question is, could the FSB pull this off, and just how far up the chain of power does this theory go?