Article published in The Daily Express, 5 June 2017.  © Richard Kemp

TODAY we face the most serious threat to Britain since the Germans bombarded our cities with V1 and V2 missiles in 1944.

Eight Islamic terrorist plots have targeted this country since the end of March – more than one a week.

Five were disrupted by the security services but the three that got through have left dozens dead or with life-changing wounds.

We must confront this violent challenge to our way of life with the same defiance as our fathers met Nazi aggression.

This was the spirit of the police who shot dead three terrorists within eight minutes of the attack unfolding at London Bridge.

It was also the spirit of ordinary citizens who ran at the terrorists, hurling missiles at them to save their fellow Londoners.

It is the fighting spirit that we must all adopt, not candles, illuminations, teddy bears and group hugs.

The gloves must come off and we need to hold the Prime Minister to her strong words on Sunday that ‘enough is enough’.

When intelligence confirms that non-British citizens in this country are involved in extremism, they must be deported.

The threat these enemies pose to the lives of our people morally outweighs any risk to their own human rights.

British citizens who are involved and can’t be deprived of citizenship and deported or convicted in court should be interned.

One of the greatest dangers is from people from this country who have fought with the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere.

They have been bloodied in battle and involved in mass murder, torture and rape.

That makes it easy for them to kill again and they are trained, motivated and under orders to attack. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Mail, Monday 8 May 2017.

Part two of RICHARD KEMP and JOHN WEIGOLD’s account of how the Nazis turned Alderney into a secret base to fire V1 missiles with chemical warheads at Britain’s south coast. Here, they reveal how tens of thousands of slave workers died to fulfil Hitler’s evil plan.

The inmates of the slave labour camp lived their pitiful and short lives in constant fear.

One who against the odds survived recalled being marched to work and a fellow prisoner falling to his knees, unable to walk further.

‘The Germans shot him right there,’ he said. ‘Another man was crucified for stealing, hung by his hands. When I got up in the mornings I saw dead bodies in the bunks around me. Sometimes their lips, nose and ears had been eaten by rats.

‘There was a special hut where the corpses were piled. Later, they were taken away, loaded onto trucks and dumped in the sea.

‘We were fed just water with a few bits of turnip floating in it, so life was a constant struggle for food. I found a rubbish heap near to the construction site where I worked and was filling a bag with vegetable peelings and cabbage leaves when someone set a dog on me.

‘It attacked again and again, tearing all my clothing. When it let go, I was beaten with a stick by a German. I was very weak at the time. There were about 500 men in my camp, and at least 300 died while I was there.’

In all its gruesome detail, this recollection of the struggle to survive under the Nazis makes the blood run cold. What is even more chilling, though, is that the camp was not in some far-flung corner of the Third Reich. Continue reading →

How the Nazis murdered 40,000 people in Channel Island concentration camps – and planned to blitz the South Coast with chemical weapons

Article published in The Daily Mail, Saturday 6 May 2017. © Richard Kemp and John Weigold

On a spring afternoon, the grassy headland is bursting with a joy that lifts the soul. Sunshine, blue sea and sky; splashes of golden gorse catch the light and bluebells sway in the breeze; larks float on air currents while gannets in their thousands swoop and screech on a rocky island below.

This is the southern tip of Alderney, smallest of the three main Channel Islands. Across the water, Guernsey, Sark and Jersey glisten. It has to be one of the most beautiful, tranquil and inspiring sights in the whole of Britain.

But close your eyes, take your mind back 75 years . . . and this idyll is a scene of sheer horror.

We are standing on the remains of a massive World War II gun emplacement — a German gun. To the left, a small valley leads down to the cliff top.

All those years ago it was known as the Valley of Death because down it were herded unknown numbers of slave workers, too exhausted to be of use any longer to their Nazi masters, to be thrown to their death on the rocks and swept away by the sea.

Behind us, lost in the undergrowth, are the chilling remains of a concentration camp, run by the SS as ruthlessly and inhumanely as any of its counterparts in the Third Reich, where men were whipped, bludgeoned, starved, hanged, shot, even crucified.

You have to pinch yourself to remember that this is British soil.

Unspeakable atrocities — which we will spell out in detail later — took place here. Not in distant territories on the other side of Europe, but just 60 miles from the coast of England, on an island that is British through and through and has owed its allegiance to the Crown since 1066.

That tiny Alderney — less than four miles long and a mile-and-a-half wide — was the site of slave labour camps during the war has been recognised for decades. But the scale of the operation and the number of deaths there have always been played down. After years of research, we are now in a position to reveal the grimmest truths. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Mail on 26 April 2017. © Richard Kemp

There cannot be many more heinous crimes than helping to frame those who risk their lives for their country.

It takes a particularly warped mind to do such a thing — to assist our enemies in falsely accusing the bravest of soldiers of rape, murder and torture.

It takes an even more twisted mind to profit from drawing up such allegations to the tune of many millions of pounds.

But for the past decade, that’s exactly what some unscrupulous lawyers are accused of doing.

The one who’s been shamed, Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers (was ever a firm more grossly misnamed?), led a witch-hunt against British troops in Iraq, making false claims they brutally and, in some cases, fatally ill-treated civilians.

Earlier this year, following the closure of his firm last summer, Shiner was finally struck off after being convicted of a string of professional misconduct charges.

Now, Martyn Day of law firm Leigh Day is up against the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal — along with his colleagues Sapna Malik and Anna Crowther.

The firm faces 19 professional misconduct charges for the way it brought claims against British soldiers for supposed ‘war crimes’ in Iraq.

On Monday, the scale of its alleged wrongdoing was revealed by Tim Dutton QC, who is representing the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

‘Over a period of more than seven years, Martyn Day, Sapna Malik and Leigh Day made and maintained allegations that soldiers in the British Army had murdered, tortured and mutilated innocent Iraqi civilians,’ said Mr Dutton. Continue reading →

A version of this article was published in The Sunday Post on 9th April 2017. © Richard Kemp

President Trump’s attack on the Al Shayrat airbase in Syria has made the world a safer place. It was a return to US global leadership and resolve that hasn’t been seen for eight years.

Thursday night’s Tomahawk cruise missile strike was made necessary by President Obama’s weakness, appeasement and poor judgement that destabilized the Middle East and signalled a free pass to despots everywhere. Russia received the green light for intervention in Syria and aggression in Ukraine.

President Assad previously used Sarin in August 2013 in an attack at Ghouta. Despite Obama’s declaration the previous year that use of chemical weapons by Assad was a red line he failed to respond, with far-reaching consequences for American credibility and authority. Instead, with Russia and Syria, he agreed the surrender and destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons under international supervision.

Ever since, Obama, his Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice have been bragging about how they ended Syria’s use of chemical weapons by diplomacy rather than force.

Tuesday’s Sarin attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun conclusively exposed their miscalculation and naivety.

The Chemical Weapons Convention bans production, stockpiling and use of these munitions worldwide. Whenever anyone attacks with chemical weapons without consequences their subsequent use becomes more likely and threatens us all. Because of that, not only was Trump’s counter-attack legitimate, lawful and proportionate — it was vital for global security.

Why did Assad attack with nerve agent? Support from Russia, Iran and Lebanese Hizballah prevented the total collapse of his regime but the war against his own people is far from won. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 28 March 2017. © Richard Kemp

I strongly welcome the news that Sgt Alexander Blackman is to be released soon, after his conviction for killing a wounded Taliban terrorist in Afghanistan was downgraded from murder to manslaughter.

Blackman was the first British soldier ever convicted of murder on the battlefield. This is particularly striking given the millions who fought in both world wars, and in all other violent conflicts in modern history.

Thousands of British soldiers who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Northern Ireland have been investigated for alleged murder, torture and rape. The scale of these proceedings is vastly greater than anything seen in all previous wars combined.

Have the British armed forces of the 21st Century suddenly descended into hitherto unknown savagery? Or have such horrors
previously been brushed under the carpet in a cover-up of unprecedented proportions?

Neither. The reality is that today, unlike in the past, the actions of our troops are measured by a society whose only understanding of combat is ‘Command and Conquer’ or ‘Call of Duty’; and judged by leaders who have never themselves faced enemy fire.

This includes senior military officers, civil servants, politicians and lawyers. These people not only permitted, and even welcomed, Sgt Blackman’s wrongful conviction for murder; they also encouraged and financed a large-scale legal vendetta against British soldiers, taking seriously hundreds of patently trumped-up accusations of criminal wrongdoing. Continue reading →