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
Principle topics
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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 followed by a clandestine meeting at an isolated base beside a town called Al Qaidah.
My testimony from Yemen can prove three things:
1. In September 1997 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s terrorist cell operated from a front company called YemPak (Yemen-Pakistan abbreviation) at PO Box 5302, Taiz, Yemen. YemPak was funded, facilitated & hosted by the multi-billion dollar Hayel Saeed Anam (HSA) Group which is now based in Dubai.
2. Al Qaeda was not the group's intended name. Al Qaidah is a town in Yemen, just 1-mile away from a base called al Qaeda al Askariya. I was taken to this base in 1997, by a Hayel saeed Anam (HSA) Group manager.
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Afghanistan, 2012 - When serving with the British army in Helmand I saw the criminal reality of our mission there. My first-hand experiences included:
— Protected from a possible IED by an Afghan civilian 'Human Shield' —
— Guarding illegal opium harvesting on Afghan government land —
— Punished for refusing orders to stone Afghan children —
— Witnessing £400-million of procurment corruption —
— Ordered to lie to visiting government ministers —
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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 Africa'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.
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