SAS may rescue kidnapped Brits

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RompelStompel

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Last hostage rescue involving Western Spec Ops in Africa - the Mogadishu operation featuring West German GSG-9 ?

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,9294,2-10-1462_2078736,00.html

London - Britain has prepared a crack Special Air Service (SAS) team to rescue five Britons feared kidnapped in Ethiopia, if diplomatic efforts to release them fail, press reports said on Monday.

Some 60 SAS troops have already been dispatched to neighbouring Djibouti, the Daily Mirror reported, while the Times talked of a "substantial" team and the Guardian said special forces were already in Ethiopia itself.

The missing people, all linked to Britain's embassy in Addis Ababa, were kidnapped last Thursday in the remote Afar desert region near the Eritrean border, according to the Ethiopian state news agency.

A British foreign office spokesperson told AFP it was believed all five were British nationals.

The Mirror said that the crack troops preparing to go in if necessary are from the SAS's standby squadron, which was set up to respond to crises around the world at a moment's notice.

"It will be very similar to the rescue operation against militia known as the West Side Boys in Sierra Leone, who kidnapped 11 British soldiers in 2000," the paper quoted former SAS sergeant Chris Ryan as saying.

The foreign office confirmed efforts were continuing to secure the safe return of the group. "It is (the) top priority to get the safe return and they are continuing to do everything they can to secure a successful outcome.

"They are doing everything they can in Ethiopia and talking with the people in the region," said a ministry spokesperson.

The ministry of defence never comments on SAS operations but the newspaper said the troops will be accompanied by two Chinook helicopters containing Land Rovers, motorbikes and weapons adapted for the hostile terrain.

It claimed that the last time a whole SAS squadron was moved together was to London after the July 5, 2005 suicide bombings on the British capital's public transport network.

The SAS standby squadron is made up of soldiers from Britain's global counter-terrorist team, which was set up during the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.

French foreign legion troops, which has soldiers in Djibouti, could provide back-up in any "snatch" operation, it added.
 
I hope that they don't need to go but I'm glad that they will be sent if neccesary.

If a country allows terrorists to operate inside it's borders and those terrorists strike out at other countries or their citizens that country loses any right to complain if other nations take military action to protect their people.
 
Hopefully it won't come to that but at least it sends the message they won't take ****. :)
 
If the brits go in, htey will see their @sses...those ethiopian bastads are so thin that they're impossible to hit. What I would do is to drop a whole lot of food outside the city and to just wait until all the "skinnies" as they are called to congregate around the food. once they ahve done that you simply walk in...get your dudes...and walk out!!

EVEN british food would probably work...probably!!
 
given the Special Ops people arrested (and then freed) en route to bombing
things disguised as Arabs, in Iraq - I wonder what rubbish the Brits were
up to in Mogadishu.
Special Ops arent pulled in to go rescue 'the Smith family on holiday'.. give it
a day or so, and we'll learn the underlying story, methinks..
I know the US are stirring things up bigtime in that part of the world anyway..
helping the country to be invaded, as I recall, in the guise of 'stabilizing' the area..
 
and how were 'embassy staff' captured or seized by unknown people?
A home invasion at the embassy? Innocent secretaries
grabbed while peacefully taking snapshots of local ruins?
Bear in mind that MI5 operatives, (or CIA agents, stationed
at US embassies) are also called 'embassy staff'.

Just saying its one thing to have a minor robbery, as diplomatic
staff have had in SA a few times - its another thing to have
staff 'kidnapped'.

Therefore I'm curious as to WHO the staff were, WHERE they were and
WHAT they were doing at the time they were grabbed. Not trolling, just
those questions automatically spring to mind, on hearing the story..
Like I said, I'm sure more details will emerge..
 
LoneGunman said:
and how were 'embassy staff' captured or seized by unknown people?
A home invasion at the embassy? Innocent secretaries
grabbed while peacefully taking snapshots of local ruins?
Click to expand...

I could stand under correction here, but I believe they were out doing the "tourist thing" (702 Radio mentioned something in this regard) ... news sources keep mentioning they were kidnapped in "a remote region". Bottom line ... home invasion seems unlikely.

I doubt even a terrorist with a single digit IQ would invade an embassy, because it's sovereign territory i.e. you may has well have invaded the country itself ... with subsequent repercussions.
 
"Fears of al Qaeda link to kidnap" 6 Mar 2007 17:29 GMT
... the Britons linked to the Embassy in Ethiopia who were taken hostage may be the victims ...
http://www.einnews.com/ethiopia/newsfeed-ethiopia-kenya

followed by:
Is Al Qaeda Behind Kidnap?
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1254417,00.html
Sky's Ian Woods is in Ethiopia, from where he reports on suggestions of an al Qaeda involvement in the kidnappings of the group of five UK embassy staff and relatives. The theory goes like this: al Qaeda have been active in the Horn of Africa in the past and only three months ago, in fact, the Ethiopian government crossed the border into Somalia to drive Islamic radicals out of Mogadishu. There have been incidents where al Qaeda have been involved - its members are active in the region.But my understanding is that the Foreign Office think it is highly unlikely that al Qaeda is involved in this particular kidnap plot..

MEANTIME

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/03/03/ethiopia.kidnappings.ap/index.html
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- Five British citizens who were kidnapped in northern Ethiopia have been spotted at a military camp across the border in Eritrea, a senior Ethiopian official said Saturday, and a group of missing French tourists were reported to be "safe and well" by their tour operator.
----------------------------------------

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0304/eritrea.html
Eritrea has denied claims that its forces were behind the kidnap of five Britons on Thursday.
The Britons, who are members of staff and their relatives at the British embassy in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, were sightseeing near the disputed border region when they went missing.
================
DEEPER BACKGROUND:

"How to create Africa's Afghanistan"
by Mike Hume, Spiked, Jan 10, 2007
http://www.orwelltoday.com/ciasomalia.shtml
It appears as if the Americans must be enjoying themselves so much being bogged down in the Afghan war, that they want to try to create another Afghanistan in the Horn of Africa. That would seem to be just about the only sensible explanation for Washington’s policy towards Somalia, which has culminated this week in air strikes against suspected al-Qaeda camps in the country’s coastal swamps. Washington policy towards Somalia has veered from one extreme to another in recent years. But the results have been consistent: at every stage, its interventions have succeeded in stirring up conflict and making matters worse. The latest turn seems likely to be no exception, a dramatic illustration of what happens when foreign policy runs out of control....

The US response to all of this was to encourage its allies in the neighbouring Ethiopian government to invade Somalia and fight alongside the warlords in support of the ‘legitimate’ government. This they did in December 2006, the well-equipped Ethiopian forces quickly driving the Islamists out of Mogadishu. The people of the city celebrated the return of the warlords by turning off all the lights and shutting up shop.

Despite the return of chaos to the streets of Mogadishu, however, the US authorities apparently considered this a major strategic success. Thus they moved to take advantage of the situation this week, by launching air-strikes against suspected al-Qaeda bases in the coastal swamps, where they claim leading terrorists responsible for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were sheltering. At the time of writing the immediate military results are unclear, with American claims to have got their men countered by local reports of civilian casualties.

The wider political results of the latest US intervention, however, should already be clear enough. It risks plunging Somalia into another round of Afghan-style conflict and turmoil, with every chance of the instability spreading elsewhere in east Africa. Historically, this region is no hotbed of Islamic militancy. Yet US policymakers seem to be doing their darnedest to rectify that situation. Even before these events, the past few years had given rise to a widespread conspiratorial belief that America and in particular the CIA are behind everything that goes wrong in Africa today.

At the end of December, as the UIC fled Mogadishu, a young Somali human rights worker gave a telling interview to the BBC. He described how the fear of a return to ‘chaos, confrontation and lawlessness’ in the city had grown alongside anger with the Americans and their Ethiopian agents. ‘When helicopters and warplanes appeared over our city and the bombs were dropped on Mogadishu airport, we got the feeling that what is going on is an international war – the war on terror. The fighter planes were coming from the sea and US ships from their Djibouti base are in the Indian Ocean. People really do believe that the US is part of this mission.’ After this week’s air strikes, of course, they would appear to have pretty good reason to be certain of that.

Great time and area to have UK embassy staff 'go sightseeing'.. funny how headlines seem to mention Al Qaida - yet interior stories all say 'unlikely'..
now there's a big 'heart warming' and sexy story about SAS to rescue kidnapped Brits..

from The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2027728,00.html
"A man who claimed to have been released by the kidnappers was presented to journalists by local officials. He said his captors wore Eritrean army uniforms. Like earlier reports that the Britons had been sighted at an Eritrean military camp, the account could not be verified."

Odd phrasing in that sentence. They're not saying he WAS kidnapped, merely that he 'claimed' to have been kidnapped and released,
yet local officials are still 'presenting' him to the Media. And the reporter points out that, just like the idea that Eritrean military were responsible,
this mans story is also 'not able to be confirmed by anyone.'

So there's zero proof of anything which can be verified, linking Eritrea - and thats buried 18 paragraphs into the story..

Like I said, the truth will emerge, no doubt.
 
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