[QUOTE=Jackbox;2099034]
Originally Posted by
aerolor
Which folks??
The first clip is from Reuters and the second is from the Belgrano Inquiry.
CNN
July 6, 2000
Argentine relatives to sue UK for Belgrano 'war crime'
BUENOS AIRES, (Reuters) -- Relatives of all 323 Argentine sailors killed when
the light cruiser General Belgrano was sunk in the Falklands War in 1982 will sue
for compensation and a war crimes trial for Margaret Thatcher.
After two parents filed for damages at the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg, France, this week, the rest of the seamen's relatives announced
Thursday that they would also seek justice for what they call a war crime.
The Belgrano, originally a U.S. ship which survived Pearl Harbor before going on
to become the pride of the Argentine fleet, was sunk by three torpedoes on May
2, 1982 after being tracked for nearly 36 hours by the British nuclear submarine
HMS Conqueror.
Argentines have long argued it was sunk on the orders of then British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher when it was outside a 200-mile (320-km) exclusion
zone around the Falkland Islands, heading for home. They believe she wanted to
undermine peace talks and enter the war to boost her popularity at home.
Belgrano Inquiry
Taken from the Belgrano ‘THATCHER’S TORPEDO’
TAM DALYELL’S CLAIM: IT WAS ‘THATCHER’S TORPEDO’
Here is the accusation made against Britain’s Prime Minister by Tam Dalyell:
I take the solemn responsibility of charging the Prime minister with a particular specific war crime and high misdemeanour. She gave the orders pre-lunch at Chequers on Sunday, 2 May 1982 for HMS Conqueror to unleash its Mark 8 torpedoes against the Belgrano, behind the back of her foreign Secretary, without consulting our allies, the American Government, in the knowledge that the Belgrano and her escorts were at that time no conceivable threat to the task force and in the knowledge that Galtieri had ordered the withdrawal of the army from the Falklands-Malvinas on the evening of Saturday, 1 May, on the basis of the Peruvian-American United Nations Peace terms. (Thatcher’s Torpedo, p.37).
That was in 1983. Then at the Belgrano Inquiry he said, concerning the decision;
‘It is my belief, based on sources that I’m not prepared even at this stage to reveal, that it was not the responsibility of Naval command at Northwood.’ (p. 30). Alas, we may never discover what those sources were! Northwood would not have wanted to make that decision, Dalyell explained, because, ‘before he [Lewin] left Northwood there was a consensus of opinion that Lord Lewin knew about, that it would be more dangerous rather than less dangerous for our Task Force to have a sinking of the Belgrano, because the threat rightly perceived by the professional naval command at Northwood came from land based aircraft and not from the six inch guns, range 13 miles, on the 44-year old cruiser.’
She Did It
Thatcher’s biographer Hugo Young simply wrote,
‘The order to perform it [the sinking] had to come from her.’ While guiding folk around Checquers, she was prone to announce: ‘This is the chair I sat in when I decided to sink the Belgrano.’ (One of Us, 1989, 271,277)
That settles it! This central fact kept being categorically denied through the Government’s FAC Report of 1985.
Thus, as The Guardian’s war correspondent wrote:
‘The decision to let Conqueror loose on the Belgrano was made by the Prime minister and members of her inner war cabinet, who were lunching at Chequers on May 2nd.’ (David Fairhall, 5.10.82, TT20.)
The thousand-page History by Sir Lawrence Freedman quotes Dalyell’s statement above and merely affirms that it is ‘simply not true.’ (The Official History of the Falklands Campaign 2005 Vol II, p.736) On the other hand, the House of Lords debate on the subject in 1983 heard Lord Hatch of Busby defend him:
my honourable friend Tam Dalyell, who I believe will go down when the history of the period is written as a man who would not be deflected from what he saw as his duty and who has uncovered a whole series of facts which should be known to the public.
The Official View
Instead, Freedman’s book asked us to believe the following four-stage process:
4 am SAT (8 am BST) Sandy Woodward head of Task Force sends instruction to Conqueror to sink Belgrano.
6.15 am SAT (10.15 am BST) Northwoods countermands this instruction, that Conqueror is ‘not to attack Belgrano, unless or until ROE (Rules of Engagement) are changed.
9.15 am SAT (1.15 pm BST) Permission to ‘sink anything’ given by ‘War Cabinet’ at Chequers to Lord Lewin – kept a secret for two years, until MOD documents were leaked to Dalyell by Clive Ponting.
9.30 am SAT (1.30 pm BST) ‘Northwood signalled the whole of the Task force that they could now sink Argentine