IWPR 265


I have enormous respect for the work of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. They work in conflict regions to teach the basic principles of journalism to local journalists, including citizen journalists. They really do get right in to the most difficult situations, and have access to knowledge on the ground that western media organisations often lack. I worked closely with their office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where Michael Andersen did a great job.

The fact that IWPR accesses direct first hand knowledge of what really happens during conflicts, almost certainly holds the key to the death of Jackie Sutton. She was killed for something she knew. The official Turkish story that she killed herself in the airport in despair at missing a connecting flight, is risible.

I cannot claim to any idea at present what it was she knew that caused her to be killed. It follows from that I do not know who killed her. But the speed of the Turkish authorities to promote a suicide narrative must in itself raise suspicions.


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265 thoughts on “IWPR

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  • nevermind

    ‘revolutionary journalistic innovation’…hahaha thanks for cheering up a drab wet morn’Ba’al.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Doğan Haber Ajansı (DHA) are now alleging that Sutton voluntarily missed her Arbil flight and that the toilet door was locked from the inside and had to be broken down to reach her:

    http://kokpit.aero/ucaga-isteyerek-binmemis

    Assistance – not much, as Google is not impressive with Turkish, and neither am I –

    https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=tr&u=http://kokpit.aero/ucaga-isteyerek-binmemis&prev=search

    While Doğan doesn’t like Erdoğan, it will have to be rather canny because Erdoğan doesn’t like Doğan, either.

  • Mary

    Michael Meacher has died aged 76.

    ~~~

    A personal note

    I have just completed three gamma camera scans plus a CT scan following two injections of Thyrogen at the w/e and a injection of I 123 yesterday. The result will say whether I am completely clear of papillary cancer.

    It was strange to be back as a patient in the department where I worked!. I was warmly welcomed which was lovely and they would like me to be a volunteer to help! I could see that they are working their socks off.

    I left them some cakes and a thank you saying that I have met only with loving kindness and care throughout my ‘pathway’ in the hospital for the last 18 months from diagnosis to surgery to radiotherapy and latterly
    I 131 and I 123 administration and subsequent scans.

  • Mary

    The take on Jacky Sutton’s death from a Lebedev organ.

    Jacky Sutton: Death of former BBC journalist IS ‘suspicious’ according to Turkish police
    A Turkish police officer has revealed Ms Sutton was calm and had 2,300 euros in her bag, which disputes reports she was ‘distressed’ after being unable to buy a new ticket when she missed a connecting flight.
    |
    4 hours ago|
    http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/jacky-sutton-death-of-former-bbc-journalist-is-suspicious-according-to-turkish-police-a3095546.html

  • Mary

    Michael Meacher would have been 76 next month.

    ‘Meacher was sacked in June 2003, to be replaced by Elliot Morley. He subsequently attacked the Labour government on a number of issues, most notably that of genetically modified food and the 2003 Iraq war, though in the run-up to the invasion he had accepted reports by the intelligence services and government saying that Iraq had Chemical Weapons.]

    Meacher has claimed that a supposed absence of prevention by United States authorities of the hijackings on 11 September 2001 was suspicious and “offered an extremely convenient pretext” for subsequent military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was seen as giving “credence to conspiracy theories” as claimed by the newspapers The Daily Mail and The Guardian. Michael Meacher has also written a foreword for David Ray Griffin’s book The New Pearl Harbor.’

    I can see why BLiar sacked him!

  • Jives

    So..conflicting reports on Jacky Sutton.

    Itd be interesting to know who first pushed the line she had no money for another flight and that CCTV wasnt working.

    Who pushed this line and why?

  • fred

    Turkey seems to be a dangerous place for journalists..

    Mystery over US journalist death in Turkey: Accident or Murder?

    Published on 21 Nov 2014

    The mystery surrounding the circumstances of the death of an Amercian journalist in Turkey is only deepening, as the investigation enters its first month. Serena Shim was working for Press TV when she was killed in a car crash. RT looks at why her final hours raise so many questions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4F4tsZKwRU

  • Mary

    Robert Stuart continues his forensic analysis of the corporate media’s propaganda. This time on Channel 4 News’ accounts on the use of barrel bombs in Syria.

    Channel 4 News is produced by ITN. Therefore similar output exists on ITV News.

    21 October 2015

    “Recent” barrel bomb footage – correspondence with Channel 4 News Managing Editor
    Please note this post does not directly relate to BBC Panorama “Saving Syria’s Children” which remains the main focus of this blog.
    https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/recent-barrel-bomb-footage-correspondence-with-channel-4-news-managing-editor/

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Mary
    21/10/2015 1:58pm

    I wish you well with the scan results, Mary. Fingers crossed.

    Kind regards,

    John

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Mary, my very best wishes for a speedy recovery and a good outcome for you and your family. I’m sorry you’ve been going through this; it sounds awful for you. All good thoughts.

  • glenn

    Mary – may I also wish you the very best, and here’s hoping for the most positive of results. Whatever differences we might have in our writing here, from time to time, wishes for your well being never faltered for a moment.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Re. the family and IWPR allegedly suggesting there wa sno-one else involved in Sutton’s death, well, that was a rapid volte face, wasn’t it? And a PM/toxicology has not yet been done. It’s one thing to say, ‘the authorities are cooperating…’ and quite another to be categorical in this way. Video images can easily be doctored, edited, everyone knows that, every documentary maker and journalist knows that. if she had “PTSD” many years ago, that did not stop her from working for many years subsequently in zones which one would have thought would have triggered multiple flashbacks and ‘fight or flight’ responses, etc. if the “PTSD” has still been an issue. Someon with “PTSD” would be unlikely to be able to function in those kinds of environments, one would have thought. And for IWPR – her employer, after all – to come out so very quickly in support of the official explanation itself is suspicious. Has pressure been exrted on them and on the family?

  • Ba'al Zevul

    This one’s been buried, whatever the truth is. There’s a faint flavour of FCO about it. I would hope the family might feel able to release some detail on why they have completely reversed their opinion on the likelihood of Sutton’s committing suicide – a note, perhaps, or maybe a poor medical prognosis. Otherwise speculation is inevitable.

    It should be noted that the family’s acquiescence was stated to be on the basis of the available evidence – usually at the bottom of the newspaper articles – and it’s not quite absolute.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Must say that I am a bit angered by family and friends flip-flopping on her death, saying now it was suicide.

    It makes it a case of taking out on the victim a bit for what happened – making her seem like another insensitive Gareth Williams.

    Remember he too killed himself with everything he had in his possession when he crawled into that carryall, and locked it!

    Suspect about-face was pressured by British spooks, like in the Kelly case too.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Was Sutton killed because she learned that the Pentagon was siding with Barzani in southern Iraq, allowing American special forces to take the lead in freeing all his supporters being held by Isis in Hawija, while leaving Talibani’s forces to fend for themselves in the north along the Turkish border?

    In short, is Washington promoting Kurdish aspirations for independence at Iraq’s rather than Turkey’s expense, and she was trying to tell that to Talibani in Erbil?

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Was Sutton killed because… Probably not. First establish that she was killed, eh? I’d be looking for underfloor access to the departure area toilet, a loop diuretic and possibly a sedative in her body, and details of toilet cleaning schedules. Among other things.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Why not do an autopsy on her, especially seeing if she was poisoned, particularly by an airborne one, rather than engage in all your fantasies about the site having to be prepared if a murder was committed?

    Then she could have just been knocked out, and strangled with her own shoe laces, and then hooked up to make it look like a suicide.

    Hope you aren’t working for any murder investigating squad.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Why not do an autopsy on her, especially seeing if she was poisoned, particularly by an airborne one, rather than engage in all your fantasies about the site having to be prepared if a murder was committed?

    Sorry? Where did I say anything about the site being prepared? You are interpolating your own fantasies. I’m expressing an interest in all the relevant factors, without presumptions in advance of any data as to what happened.

    Then she could have just been knocked out, and strangled with her own shoe laces, and then hooked up to make it look like a suicide.

    Without anyone noticing, in a busy airport, and leaving no signs of violence. The logistics are interesting: to strangle someone with their own shoelaces, it is necessary to remove at least one shoelace (trainers: 150cm long) after you have hit her over the head (leaving no mark from this), then strangle her, string her up and evaporate, after locking the cubicle door on the inside.

    Hope you aren’t claiming to be an ex-spook historian…..

    However, this , especially the last section, gives some small support to the idea that she might have done it herself:

    http://littleatoms.com/world/my-friend-jacky-sutton-feared-no-evil

    Airports are terrible places for people in our trades. For weeks before the mission there are distracting 14-hour days of cramming human rights reports; budgets on Excel spreadsheets to pick apart; security to inspect, and so on.

    For weeks after there’s the adrenaline punch of not only doing a job you love, but doing it side by side by journalists whose courage defies belief or easy expression.

    But in between the two there is the purgatory of the check-in and departure gate.

    All the hopes and fears of scores of missions, run through the mind during that dumbly repeated walk across a boringly familiar concourse, scrunched up with old traumas and memories of lost friends. Troubled by the gnawing fear of failure, and the fatal consequences of a bad call, not for you, but worse, for a colleague.

    The steps past the duty free are the same every time, but the voices (Flee now while you still can!), they do get louder. On One trip, I lost it at Gatwick Airport on my way to Moldova. Harmless place, but it wasn’t Chisinau that was on my mind at the time.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Just look at your post #200 where you talk about looking for underground access to the departure toilet when climbing in and out of booths by merely standing on the toilet seat is quite easy.

    Then you go with a long quotation by someone else, making out that it says Sutton may have killed herself when it only sats that she was a most courageous person, making murder by her enemies much more likely than her making it most convenient for them by simply killing herself.

    And I am an ex-spook historian who found that neither profession had much to do with the other.

    As a spook, I spent most of my time getting information of all kinds from all kinds of people, and simply writing it up. As an historian, I gathered all kinds of information from all kinds of sources, thought about what it all meant, and then wrote it up as best I could.

    The former was more like being a stenographer while the latter was more like a creative writer.

  • seisen

    > Without anyone noticing,

    http://www.compliancesigns.com/NHE-8645.shtml

    > in a busy airport,

    busy, in terms of a saturday night and about 30 restrooms/toilets only at the departure zone.
    http://www.ataturkairport.com/tr-TR/ucus_oncesi/Documents/gidis.pdf

    > and leaving no signs of violence.

    concluded by an independant pathologist in Istanbul?

    > The logistics are interesting: to strangle someone with
    > their own shoelaces,

    arbitrary assumption i guess.

    > it is necessary to remove at least one shoelace
    > (trainers: 150cm long)

    arbitrary assumption i guess.

    > after you have hit her over the head
    > (leaving no mark from this),

    arbitrary assumption i guess.

    > then strangle her,

    which is highly possible, since asphyxia *seems* to be the supposed (but not approved) matter of death.

    > string her up and evaporate, after locking the cubicle
    > door on the inside.

    http://www.replacementkeys.co.uk/utility

    You/we will not close this case, simply because there is not even a “case” to close (in legal terms). There is no visible interest from the official (british) side either.

    I wouldn’t call it a U turn by her family, but the statement to let this matter rest speaks of itself.

    The only thing that has been made clear, is the futile message that ‘supporting journos in conflict zones is dangerous’.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Yes, I thought of that, Seisen. ‘Kapalı’ on the door is definitely a possibility. Or a wet-floor cone, mop and bucket. Keeps the punters out while the assault is conducted. Still a lot to go wrong, though, and probably some difficulty evading CCTV…if, as I am sure you will point out, the CCTV security bloke hasn’t gone for a leak, conveniently, lol. If you want laces for your trainers you will be sold 150cm ones. Much less, incidentally, and they’re less easy to hang yourself/ anyone with. As I said to our expert mugger above, I’m interested in all possibilities. The data available can be taken at face value, or it can be questioned. Certainly, as you imply, it could have been the Turks. It need not have been, and it could have been suicide.

    Don’t know what Ataturk looks like on a Saturday midnight, so illuminate me. The CCTV released shows a healthy amount of customers. Flightside there are toilets every one/two bays. According to one report she used the one nearest the bay for the flight she’d missed. Someone would have had to watch her going in (assuming her desire for a pee was wholly natural) and organise the closure. Was someone just following her round the airport? Theories on how to strangle a fit and active lady without leaving marks of anything else (the family saw the body, I understand) will also be welcome.

    I’m just kicking it around a bit, me. If it was suicide, fine, If it wasn’t, it was undoubtedly buried with FCO help. And I really still don’t believe the Turks would shit on their own doorstep. Kurds, yes. Syrians/Russians yes.

    That’s me.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Thanks, Selsen, from this alleged mugger.

    Still, think that poisoning by a airborne one possible which could have her rushing to the toilet as she was dying. Would make setting up the apparent suicide much easier.

    I have been at Ataturk Airport on a Saturday, the night of February 1-2, 2013. Don’t know if she was found in the morning of her Saturday or in the late evening.

    Must say that I was a bit frightened there, though I don’t mind most airports, and have no fear of flying.

    Ataturk is so big, and there were so few passengers in it at the time that I even worried if I fell asleep. Most airports are a bit cramped, and I would prefer usually far fewer passengers.

    And there was trouble in finding any toilet in Ataturk.

    Looks like I will be going there again in February, and will make it a Saturday just to check.

    I am not just conveniently making this up.

    And looks like she was being followed, most likely a Turk who feared she was making trouble for its boundary for its border with Iraq.

    She apparently had no idea that she was being set up there. She only feared being in a place like Erbil where Dersh had easy access to her.

  • Durak

    The speed of the official narrative along with excessive “co-operation” by the Turks makes it look dodgy from the start.

  • Kempe

    ” The speed of the official narrative along with excessive “co-operation” by the Turks makes it look dodgy from the start. ”

    Why?

  • seisen

    @Ba’al Zevul

    > Certainly, as you imply, it could have been the Turks.

    Yes, it could, but not necessarily! The only thing i’m sure about, is that J.Sutton had no intention to die at the Ataturk Airport.

    It is not like there haven’t been suicides on international airports. After a sloppy search, also not representative, the most reported airport suicides happened as jumps from ceilings or galleries. Some deaths occured through self inflicted gunwounds. And only two by hanging:

    Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (in police custody)
    http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/indian-man-commits-suicide-in-je
    ddah-airport-restroom_918386.html

    and

    Dubai (UAE)
    “Lankan maid commits suicide at Dubai airport”
    http://www.khaleejtimes.com/article/20080124/ARTICLE/301249920/1002

    Of course, if i assume a ‘wet operation’, the MIT who allegedly intimidated the late Serena Shim (whose death remained without visible reaction by US officials too) would be the usual suspect.

    But listening to the 45 minute interview with J.Sutton(1) from last year, she made a rather brave impression to me, which is supported by her friend who said “Toughest woman u could meet”. It’s unlikely she would have stepped back if intimidated. *IF SO* and the situation got out of control, this could have been an operational accident (felt cynicism by no means intended!). Simply botched, but not intentional.

    Maybe a bit offtopic, but this can happen when a lone 50y old woman is unruly at the Ataturk airport:

    “Tracey Lynn Brown, Turkish police officers charged with death of American tourist”
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3222562/Twelve-Turkish-police-officers-charged-death-American-tourist-horrifying-struggle-breathe-restrained-caught-camera.html

    Her undoubtedly respectable work for IWPR, that has Partner Organizations(2) mentioned like ‘National Endowment For Democracy’ (NED = the civil financial arm of the CIA) and ‘Open Society Institute’ (Soros Foundation) is another matter worth to look up for…in the sense of a larger “Statebuilding strategy”, which is opposed by different parties in this world.

    @Trowbridge H. Ford
    > And looks like she was being followed,
    > most likely a Turk who feared she was making
    > trouble for its boundary for its border with Iraq.

    How come? She had trouble once at this airport, from what i have read. Out of a paranoid security perspective, it wouldn’t surprise me if she was kept under 24/7 surveillance, no matter what.

    > She apparently had no idea that she was being set up
    > there. She only feared being in a place like Erbil
    > where Dersh had easy access to her.

    Yes, maybe. Of course, this is all fruitless speculation, but i tend to think she had more friends in Erbil than in Turkey.

    (1)
    http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/09/17/4089501.htm

    (2)
    http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_War_and_Peace_Repo
    rting#Partner_Organizations

    OT, from yesterday news:

    “Ratko Mladic Witness Found Dead in Hotel”
    http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/mladic-s-expert-found-dead-in-hotel-10-22-2015

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