Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

On red alert

Aiden Hartley

Wednesday, 18th June 2008

Aidan Hartley on the Wild Life

‘Yaes!’ I’ll answer the phone in a falsetto Scottish accent. ‘Can ae help yay?’ If the voice is unfamiliar I lapse into Gaelic and slam down the receiver. This is my strategy for tackling a new wave of death threats being made against me. I have also taken to wearing funny hats, a stick-on moustache and a pirate’s eyepatch. Sometimes I will only leave the house in a burqa.

The threats are real and I take them seriously, though I am only joking about the disguises. I wish I could become an accountant and live in Plymouth, but it’s too late now. I am a hack. But my life has been on red alert since last month’s broadcast of my documentary about the bloodthirsty rule of Somalia’s government, financed by this Labour government using British taxpayers’ money. I’ve been told to beware of carjackings and house break-ins. I get another message that says ‘the monsters are planning to hire a hit squad to get rid of you for exposing them to the world. Watch out, my friend.’

Incredibly, these threats are being attributed to Somali leaders who hold European Union passports. These men have homes and families in the UK and they regularly pass through Heathrow. Britain was kind enough to give them asylum years ago when they claimed to be victims of conflict, before they began commuting back to wage war in Africa. The UK government even pays their personal salaries, while their families enjoy state benefits back in Birmingham, Leicester and London.

My hour-long documentary gathered on-camera witness testimonies inside Mogadishu from victims listing allegations against these UK-backed leaders of mass killings, torture, false imprisonment and extortion. The city is so dangerous due to the fighting that British government officials never dare visit Mogadishu themselves to monitor where UK aid money is being spent. But when the TV programme’s findings were raised in the House of Commons on 11 June, the response by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Meg Munn shrugged this off by taking a swipe at the media. ‘Reporting is often biased and may be exaggerated to exert influence on the international community,’ she said. Nice one.

1 | 2 | 3 Next page

More articles from: Aiden Hartley | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (2)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

David Short

June 20th, 2008 6:03am

I see the Spectator has got my friend Aidan's name spelled wrongly again!

How can you guys spell it as 'Aiden' on one line and then 'Aidan' a mere centimetre below on the same screen?

Get a grip.

M Golf

June 20th, 2008 7:17am

Let another thing be known about what Britain is doing in Africa:
Those white Africans, British descendents who still live in Kenya, and who until recently used to be able to get a stamp on their Kenyan passports proving their right of abode in the UK are now denied it. They need a visa to enter Britain and this is now in the hand of an agent, not the High Commission. If the visa is denied, as it is happening, they cannot go back. There, British citizens not allowed in Britain for being white, and Somali warlords welcome. Thank the Left for it which has ran the FCO for the past decade.