Eurasia Press & News
Exclusive: A Royal Air Force plane conducting surveillance of Palestine has been filmed taking off from its base on Cyprus for the first time.
Jutting out from behind a line of trees on Cyprus’ southern peninsula, a twin propeller plane prepares for an early evening take off.
With its red, white and blue livery, ZZ507 looks more like a VIP shuttle than a military intelligence platform.
And yet this is one the Royal Air Force’s most highly classified assets: the Shadow R1.
Speaking at an arms fair, air commodore Ian Gale stressed “when you have an aeroplane whose output that we guard very, very carefully, you’ve got to know that what it’s doing is absolutely crucial.”
Throughout the last year, the Shadow fleet has been conducting almost daily surveillance over Gaza, 225 miles away. The trips are flown by the RAF’s 14 Squadron – nicknamed “the Crusaders”.
Their missions are partially visible on flight tracking websites, which log hundreds of sorties heading to and from the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Naledi Pandor was South Africa’s foreign minister when it accused Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
She told Declassified that such flights are “collusion with what has been called a crime against humanity”.
Until now, no pictures have emerged of the Shadow fleet operating from their base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, where Britain retains three per cent of its former colony for military purposes.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) released footage of RAF aid drops on Gaza and bombing raids on Yemen as those planes took off from Akrotiri.
But it has declined to publish any images of these Shadow surveillance operations.
Even the family of a British aid worker who was killed by Israel was denied access to footage from a Shadow plane that was in the air as the massacre unfolded.
So Declassified hired an experienced cameraman in Cyprus, Aleksandar Ljubojevic, and tasked him with gaining the first images of the flights.
Ljubojevic has worked with some of Britain’s biggest television networks and was previously invited by the MoD to film inside Akrotiri.
However no such invitation was available to Declassified.
Stake out
After making several enquiries to the MoD, its press office eventually conceded it could not stop media filming on public land outside the base.
Armed with this information, Ljubojevic set out at the crack of dawn last Monday and found a spot about a mile from the runway to set up his tripod.
Military police from what Britain calls the Sovereign Base Area Administration came to check his identity, but allowed him to film after seeing the email we had received from the MoD press office.
That day, the base hummed with activity. Chinook helicopters, an American Black Hawk, RAF Typhoon fighter jets and a Voyager refuelling tanker all came and went.
Yet as the sun set over Cyprus, the Shadow was nowhere to be seen.
And then a light suddenly flashed on the runway. It was about to take off.
Ljubojevic panned carefully as the Shadow’s distinctive tail poked above the trees, and then refocused as the plane climbed away from Akrotiri.
A row of sensors sticking up from the fuselage silhouetted against the twilight, as the pilot banked south east towards Gaza.
Once there, “they’ll see absolute destruction,” Pandor commented. “There’s been a complete annihilation of any form of civilised infrastructure for Palestinian people.”
What exactly the crew recorded that night remains a state secret, but it goes well beyond what a normal camera could see.
Shadow carries “high definition electro-optical” sensors and a satellite communication link to “enable information to be downloaded…during a mission”.
‘Hostage rescue’
British authorities claim there is nothing wrong with these missions, whose cost and even name are classified.
Announcing their launch last year, then defence secretary Grant Shapps insisted: “Only information relating to hostage rescue will be passed to relevant authorities responsible for those rescues.”
So narrow was the focus of these flights that Shapps would not even confirm whether he would share footage they incidentally gleaned of war crimes with the International Criminal Court.
Under Labour, the MoD shifted position slightly. As Declassified first reported in July, it said it “would consider any formal request” from the court to share footage.
Yet their stated primary objective – hostage rescue – has not reassured the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a human rights group based in London.
Their spokesman told Declassified: “It sounds very innocuous on the face of it, but it has to be considered in the context of what Israel’s hostage rescue operations have been.
“The most notable example of a hostage rescue operation in Israel’s eyes…was the Nuseirat camp massacre in which [approximately] 275 Palestinians were killed”.
ICJP noted that “very few…hostages have been recovered militarily” – around eight out of some 250 taken by Hamas.
Far more, over 100, were freed during the temporary ceasefire last November, which is why the families of many remaining hostages are so angry Netanyahu has failed to reach another truce.
‘I don’t have the figures’
When he started the Shadow flights last December, Shapps vowed to “move heaven and earth to bring our hostages home”, alluding to some British nationals being held in Gaza.
Foreign secretary David Cameron admitted a month later only two of the hostages were British.
When asked how many hostages Britain had helped to free, he told an astonished parliamentary committee: “I don’t have the figures.”
After more probing, his top diplomat at the Foreign Office, Philip Barton, stepped in to admit the number was zero.
In fact, RAF support for Netanyahu’s military raids may have put the hostages at even greater risk.
By May, Hamas was claiming that one of the two British captives, Nadav Popplewell, had died in an Israeli air strike.
Israel’s military could not immediately deny this, later saying Popplewell had died in Khan Younis “during our operation there”, before suggesting Hamas was responsible.
His death leaves one surviving UK hostage, Emily Damari, a 28-year-old dual national.
Her case received little publicity until recently, when it emerged that she is a cousin of Lord Levy, who was Tony Blair’s special envoy to the Middle East. Levy said Damari’s mother “was a bridesmaid at my wedding”.
‘Go home’
Perhaps this high profile connection explains why British authorities are willing to conduct such controversial missions, which have drawn unwelcome attention to its military presence on parts of Cyprus.
Hamas has denounced them, saying Britain’s “intelligence flights over the Gaza Strip make it an accomplice to the Zionist occupation in its crimes, and responsible for the massacres to which our Palestinian people are subjected”.
Such statements have alarmed Cypriots. Seviros Koulas, who leads the largest youth movement on the island (EDON), told Declassified: “The presence of the British bases in Cyprus can be only a danger for the island because they are putting us inside the map of the war zone.”
Britain’s role in Gaza has galvanised EDON and other anti-war groups into protesting outside Akrotiri. Peter Iosif, from the Cyprus Peace Council, believes the bases are a relic of empire. “Come on, the colonial era is gone,” he commented. “You just have to pick up the stuff, go home.”
Such sentiments garner sympathy in South Africa, with its own painful experience of colonialism. Pandor, a stalwart of the African National Congress, said: “I can’t imagine what a justification would be of such administered territories in the 21st century.”
She added: “I think we need to continue the efforts to end all forms of colonial or neo-colonial oppression.”
