Introduction
Over the course of twenty-five years of varied travels - as a soldier, businessman and backpacker - I've seen or become aware of matters of global significance. I'm not a journalist but it has still fallen to me to report these ongoing situations, about which I have critical and currently actionable witness testimony.
Anthony C Heaford
@mancunianquiet
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Principle topics
Yemen, 1997 - My most significant experience, meeting al Qaeda, happened when I was a business traveller visiting a new customer in Yemen. That six-day visit ended with introductions to senior members of al Qaeda (including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) followed by a clandestine meeting at an isolated base beside a town called al Qa'idah.
My testimony from Yemen can prove three things:
1. al Qaeda was not the group's name. al Qa’idah is a town in Yemen with a rebel training base called al Qa’idah al Askariya close by
3. 9/11 was planned in Taiz, Yemen & Hamburg, Germany - NOT Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, 2012 - When serving with the British army in Helmand I saw the criminal reality of our mission there. My experiences included:
— Ordered to lie to visiting government ministers —
— Witnessing £400-million of procurment corruption —
— Guarding illegal opium harvesting on Afghan government land —
— Punished for refusing orders to stone Afghan children —
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Colombia, 2006 - Backpacking in Colombia shortly after the disbandment of the right-wing paramilitary AUC death squads wasn’t without risks. I saw close-up that the death squads hadn’t quite disbanded yet. I lodged with men I believe were Afrikaans mercenaries, saw German kidnap victims and shared a surreal beer with a man called Adolfo, surrounded by his bodyguards. I think I have a pretty good overview of the paramilitary (ex-AUC) activity there and the claimed transfer of cocaine production (establishing coca plantations) to Uganda by said men. In 2017 Uganda’s first known cocaine production facility was discovered and destroyed by local police.
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Bolivia, 1994 - I attended a tense meeting in a remote Andean town between a future President of Bolivia, Carlos Mesa, and a self-proclaimed international terrorist from Germany, to whom Mesa was delivering a message from the then President of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sánchez. The German also claimed to be the son of a renowned World-War-Two U-boat commander. This was an entirely random encounter whilst I was a tourist backpacking in South America. Carlos Mesa served as President from 2003-2005 and is standing in the 2019 elections too. In May 2019 Bolivian police opened formal investigations of Carlos Mesa's financial links to cocaine cartels and corrupt state officials.