The officer added, “Matt made us form a family and we were really a family”. We don’t just hand them the money once a month.”. So if there is anything, they [the US] communicate direct: ‘We need this to be done’”, a Kenyan paramilitary officer with knowledge of the US embassy liaison relationship said. Of course there’s more to Vauxhall than Alembic House, MI6 and some gay clubs (have a think about that sentence). [10] A scheme of office blocks was subsequently developed for the site, with a government agency as their occupier. [2] The windows in the SIS building are triple glazed for security purposes. In plainclothes but, according to Ali, sporting body armour and M4 carbines supplied by the CIA, the operatives approached and stood over the couple, surveying their kill. Describing the killings as “unconstitutional”, the former Vice President added: “This has spread bitterness…but because we are doing the bidding of the West in the war on terror, they are allowed to.”. It’s only after 2011, when Kenyan forces went into Somalia and Kenya became a legitimate target, so they are always armed. Working together, we have disrupted terrorist attacks and rolled back groups that plot them.”. That’s the foundation for this conflict.”. It also served as the London headquarters of the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) until … “So it was not hard to arrest them. “I don’t have to shoot if I don’t see your hand”, a RRT officer said, describing the team’s rules of engagement. They tell us this is what is happening and they have already informed the other authorities so we are given information to go and conduct the operation”, one paramilitary officer explained. Though Kenya’s ATPU was widely blamed for the renditions, multiple police and paramilitary sources confirmed that RRT operatives undertook some of them, in addition to renditions from Somalia in the years before. Commenting on US support to the RRT, former US ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, who left office in 2011, said, “That kind of support is critical to making them a professional force. They came and he was in the boot of the car outside the police station.”. “It’s not the same as having Seal Team 6 go after a target…[but] it’s not like it’s going to be investigated if it ends up in a military end-state [killed]”, the former senior US official explained. He says he reached out to Godec but never received a response. Portsmouth has a lot to offer, and is a wonderful walking city. Sometimes, though, targets are taken alive. While the precise number of RRT kill or capture raids against terror suspects is unknown due to the clandestine nature of the force’s operations, RRT commandos and their American backers stressed that the Kenyan force is not strictly a ‘kill team’ in the way ‘Tier 1’ special force units, such as. But, despite the evidence compiled by the human rights organisation, there has been no known official Kenyan investigation into whether the RRT’s deadly raid was based on mistaken identity, whether excessive force was used in killing Owiti, or why his wife was also killed. [5] The building was completed in April 1994 and officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II accompanied by Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, in July of that year. Grant had sneaked back into Kenya after allegedly receiving paramilitary training in Somalia and was an associate of British terror suspect Samantha Lewthwaite, dubbed the ‘White Widow’. Declassified UK is an investigative journalism organisation that covers the UK’s role in the world. We are SIS – the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service - also known as MI6. What followed took a familiar pattern for night time counter-terror raids in Kenya, many of which remain shrouded in mystery and rumour. that al-Shabaab’s use of improvised explosive devices reached its “greatest extent in Somali history”. Officers demanded the suspects open the door, but one responded by hurling a hand grenade, killing an RRT commando and seriously injuring the officer commanding. But we do not know what he did. Former deputy chief (operations) of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, Henry Crumpton explained the nature of the war on terror in Kenya. When you look at the counterterrorism programme in Kenya, it’s been successful…but I haven’t seen anything about winning the peace, and that is where the policy issue is essential.”, He added: “You can have great covert action, great law enforcement, great military cooperation, but if you don’t have a policy where you think about the long-term, then you’re just going to be engaged in the same operations, in the same districts, in the same border areas, in the same valleys, again and again.”, The US embassy in Nairobi, the Kenya Police Service and the Kenyan Ministry of the Interior did not respond to requests for comment. Injured operatives are given cash payouts and treatment at Nairobi’s private Aga Khan hospital. The location of the headquarters was classified information, though The Daily Telegraph reported that it was "London's worst-kept secret, known only to every taxi driver, tourist guide and KGB agent". As seen in, M's office with relocated desk, as seen in, An explosion in the vault breaches outer wall, as seen in, M's office, facing the operations room through glass partition. History; … Injured operatives are given cash payouts and treatment at Nairobi’s private Aga Khan hospital. The RRT was set up, equipped, trained and is guided on tactical counter-terror operations by America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a Declassified investigation can reveal. [36], Government office building in Lambeth, London, England, A view of SIS's Vauxhall Cross headquarters from, Mark Henderson. The building was first featured in GoldenEye in 1995 and was depicted as having been attacked in The World Is Not Enough (1999), Skyfall (2012), and Spectre (2015). In another raid, on 18 May 2013, RRT operatives surrounded an apartment building outside Nairobi, according to an officer with knowledge of the operation. Housed at a secretive base in the town of Ruiru, roughly 30 miles east of Nairobi, the ranks of the Rapid Response Team (RRT) have thinned in recent years as some members have decamped for Kenya’s burgeoning private security sector, which offers better pay and working conditions. Two years later, in June 2013, RRT commandos would kill Kassim Omollo, an alleged al-Shabaab trainer, bomb expert and an accomplice of Grant, in another pre-dawn raid. [35] Filming for the 24th Bond film, Spectre, took place on the Thames near Vauxhall Cross in May 2015. , can and do receive express orders to take out targets. “He was a religious person and the Kenyan government goes after religious people,” Faraj’s wife Rahma Ali said. MI6 is an organisation where integrity, courage and respect are central to what we do. Nobody does it better! The RRT commandos who worked with Matt explained that his CIA counterpart would prepare the team through the General Service Unit-Recce-RRT chain of command in advance of orders issued by Kenya’s Inspector General of police. , an officer confided that the unit was explicitly tasked to “eliminate” a high-value terror suspect, only to wrongly kill a family man. Mi6, known as the The Vauxhall Cross SIS Building, is the official headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Occasionally, CIA operatives themselves have participated in operations, US officials and Kenyan RRT officers confirmed. In 2019, their region reportedly witnessed 43 extrajudicial killings by Kenyan police, an increase of almost 50% on the previous year. [33][34] For Skyfall a 50-foot-high (15-metre) model of the building was constructed at Pinewood Studios. Mombasa had already witnessed a string of unexplained killings of radical Muslim figures. For over 100 years SIS has ensured the UK and our allies keep one step ahead of our adversaries. But back to Mi6…. RRT members, he added, receive “top-tier training from some of the best operators in the world – legends in special forces – and then you get a [financial] bonus for being on call and being part of that unit.”. All that information we are being given by the US government, not the NIS.”. [19] The Metropolitan Police recovered the discarded rocket launcher at Spring Gardens park in Vauxhall, as well as finding remains of the rocket which had exploded against an eighth floor window. Leaked US diplomatic cables show that for over a decade Kenya’s intelligence service, NIS, has had “primary responsibility for CT [counterterrorism]” in the country. The building was depicted as having been attacked in the Bond films The World Is Not Enough (1999), and Skyfall (2012). In many instances, suspects raided by the RRT have ended up dead, with a police spokesperson subsequently claiming the target was armed and dangerous. It found Kenyan police were involved in nearly two-thirds of the cases, many of them execution-style killings. “The work our special team does needs a lot of secrecy. Many MI6 staff are based overseas while others work from our headquarters in Vauxhall, London. Designed by Terry Farrell, it is nicknamed within the … SIS (MI6) AT A GLANCE WATCH VIDEO We are SIS – the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service - also known as MI6. by the Independent Medico-Legal Unit, a non-profit organisation that monitors misconduct by law enforcement, recorded 1,873 gun deaths in six urban areas in Kenya between 2009 and 2014. While the operations missed their targets, within two months a group of UN experts. Please note that we are no longer able to operate our usual range of sightseeing tours due to Thames Water’s compulsory purchase of our slipway to build the next phase of the Thames Tunnel super sewer. Eight months later, on 30 August, the same Kenyan paramilitary team that swept in to repel the DusitD2 attackers reappeared, this time at Modi’s mud-stone home which sits among thickets of coconut palms, cashew and neem trees. The building had been sold for £130 million in 1989, with construction planned to take three years, built by John Laing. “There’s one stat that counts more than convictions. The headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service, also known as Military Intelligence, Section 6, is located at 85, Albert Embankment in the south western part of central London, on the bank of the River Thames beside Vauxhall Bridge.1, Designed by Terry Farrell and built by John Laing, the Developer Regalian Properties PLC approached the government in 1987 to assess their interest in the proposed building. But not all MI6 targets are as fortunate as Grant, who is now serving a 13-year jail sentence in Kenya after being convicted for possessing bomb-making material and using forged documents to obtain Kenyan citizenship. “The operation’s target was somewhere else, but there was some mix-up and they headed to the wrong house,” the officer said. “It’s the intelligence services identifying the threat, figuring a way out to mitigate the threat, figuring out that this is going to be a law enforcement end state [capture] or not [kill] and then dealing with it”. The effect of the act was to make it a specific criminal offence for a person to trespass onto the site. Leave a comment. to surrender, stating that hand grenades, a pistol, an AK-47 assault rifle, ammunition and chemicals for making home-made explosives had been recovered. He says he reached out to Godec but never received a response. The year 2018 witnessed one of the lowest death tolls from terror attacks in the past decade in Kenya. The very public face of the secret service, James Bond fans see filming of Spectre on River Thames in London, https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/SIS_Building?oldid=87879. “We reinforced each other”, a former senior US State Department official said of US-UK counter-terrorism in Kenya. A festive Charles Dickens themed tour for all the family. Faraj’s killing epitomised a shift in RRT priorities. As an elected member of the county assembly, Faraj’s brother Saad’s status brought him into contact with US ambassador to Kenya, Robert Godec, who departed in 2019. [31] In their 2014 Guide to London's Contemporary Architecture, Kenneth Allinson and Victoria Thornton wrote:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, Some see this building as Farrell's most controlled and mature building – a rich diet, certainly, but not a cacophony of rhetorical features, nor without the unselfconscious virtuosity which can uplift and excite. It found Kenyan police were involved in nearly two-thirds of the cases, many of them execution-style killings. As seen in, M's office, facing desk and hidden screen. [23], The Queen visited Vauxhall Cross for a second time in February 2006,[24] and Charles, Prince of Wales visited in July 2008. In the 19th century the site it occupies was home to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens – an infamous site for drinking gin, dancing, revelry and well, pleasure (!).