Syria conflict: BBC shown 'signs of chemical attack' - BBC News

16 May 2013 Last updated at 13:02 ET

The BBC's Ian Pannell reports from inside Saraqeb. Guidance: This video contains disturbing images

The BBC has been shown evidence apparently corroborating reports of a chemical attack in Syria last month.

A BBC correspondent who visited the northern town of Saraqeb was told by eyewitnesses that government helicopters had dropped at least two devices containing poisonous gas.

The government has vehemently denied claims it has used chemical agents.

The US has warned that such a development would be a "red line" for possible intervention.

However, President Barack Obama has said the current intelligence on possible chemical weapon usage did not constitute sufficient proof.

In other developments:

• Mr Obama met Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Washington, and both leaders reaffirmed their support for Syria's opposition and their demands for President Bashar al-Assad to stand down
• UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has reiterated that Syria must allow access to a UN team to investigate the chemical weapons claims

'Suffocating smell'

On 29 April, Saraqeb, a town south-west of Aleppo, came under artillery bombardment from government positions.

Doctors at the local hospital told the BBC's Ian Pannell they had admitted eight people suffering from breathing problems. Some were vomiting and others had constricted pupils, they said. One woman, Maryam Khatib, later died.

A number of videos passed to the BBC appear to support these claims, but it is impossible to independently verify them. Test are being carried out in France, the UK and Turkey on samples from the site of the attack.

Mrs Khatib's son Mohammed had rushed to the scene to help his mother and was also injured in the attack.

"It was a horrible, suffocating smell. You couldn't breathe at all. You'd feel like you were dead. You couldn't even see. I couldn't see anything for three or four days," Mr Khatib told the BBC.

A doctor who treated Mrs Khatib said her symptoms corresponded to organophosphate poisoning and that samples had been sent for testing.

One device was said to have landed on the outskirts of Saraqeb, with eyewitnesses describing a box-like container, with a hollow concrete casing inside.

In another video, a rebel fighter holds a canister said to be hidden inside the devices. Witnesses claim there were two in each container.

Another video shows parts of a canister on the ground, surrounded by white powder.

The BBC has been told that samples from the scene and from the alleged victims have been sent to Britain, France, Turkey and America for testing.

Competing claims

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer at the UK's Joint Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear Regiment, said the testimony and evidence from Saraqeb was "strong, albeit incomplete".

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, chemical weapons expert: "I gauge that they're not making it up."

In Saraqeb and in three similar events in Syria in recent weeks, "people have got ill and died and their symptoms are what we would expect to see from a nerve type of agent, be it sarin or be it organophosphate," Mr de Bretton-Gordon said.

On the available evidence, recent attacks in Al-Otaybeh to the east of Damascus, in Adra near the town of Douma, and in the Sheikh Maqsoud district of Aleppo appear "virtually identical" to what happened in Saraqeb, according to Mr de Bretton-Gordon.

Mr de Bretton-Gordon has not visited the site or tested any of the alleged evidence but was given full access to the material gathered by the BBC.

Both the US and UK have spoken of growing evidence that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons.

Rebel fighters have also been accused of using them. They also have denied this.

In March, Syria's government and opposition called for an inquiry into an alleged chemical weapon attack in Khan al-Assal in the north of Syria which killed at least 27 people, with both sides blaming each other.

A 15-strong UN team headed by a Swedish scientist, Ake Sellstrom, has been assembled to investigate the claims.

However, the Syrian government has refused the team access. Syrian officials have been quoted as saying they want the team to look into the incident in Khan al-Assal, but the team has requested unconditional access with the right to inquire into all credible allegations.

The UN estimates that the two-year-old conflict has left at least 80,000 people dead.

Google Faces Fresh Grilling Over Low Tax Bills - Sky News - Sky News

Google has denied trying to "disguise" the way its business operates in order to minimise its tax bill in the UK.

The internet giant's vice president Matt Brittin was questioned by the Commons' public accounts committee (PAC) for a second time about the firm's practices.

His appearance came as newly-published accounts revealed Amazon.com's main UK unit only paid £2.4m in tax in 2012 on sales of £4.2bn.

Committee chair Margaret Hodge branded Google "devious, calculated and unethical" and accused the company of "deliberately manipulating the reality of their business".

She added: "You are a company that says you do no evil and I think that you do do evil in that you use smoke and mirrors to avoid paying tax."

But Mr Brittin replied: "We comply fully with the laws that are set down by politicians. Tax is not a matter of choice, tax is a matter of following the law."

Google vice president Matt Brittin giving evidence

Mrs Hodge warned the Google executive that it was a "very serious offence" to mislead Parliament as she raised conflicting evidence about the firm's sales.

She claimed documents seen by MPs and evidence from a "stream of whistleblowers" who said sales were happening in the UK contradicted Mr Brittin's comments last November.

"It was quite clear from all that documentation that the entire trading process and sales processes took place in the UK," she told him.

Mr Brittin refused to budge, saying: "I stand by what I said. I described very clearly how we operate."

MPs were told that Google's largest operation in Europe was based in Dublin and that any advertiser in Europe contracts with Google in Ireland.

"We set that up because we wanted to be able to contract with customers across the whole of Europe, not just the UK," Mr Brittin said.

Google's data centre in Dublin

Mrs Hodge said she had seen a Google invoice from a London address and a presentation about how to sell involving UK-based staff.

A senior salesman has also contacted the committee, claiming he was paid commission for sales and "closing deals", she continued.

"This is a UK sale and should be subject to UK tax. I would ask you to reconsider what you are telling us, because it doesn't make sense to your own staff, it doesn't make sense to the committee, it doesn't make sense to any of your clients.

"The only people it seems to make sense to are Google - you are the last man standing on this."

Mr Brittin admitted sales staff in the UK promoted Google and encouraged people to spend money but said the transactions all took place in Ireland.

But Mrs Hodge said: "We all accept the billing is in Ireland. If sales activity is taking place in the UK, you are misleading both Parliament and the taxpayers in suggesting that is not happening."

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office and Comptroller & Auditor General, told Mr Brittin the issue was not "going away" because people remained sceptical.

Amazon is thought to limit its tax bill by routing sales through Luxembourg

"There are a ton of people who are listening and saying we think they are selling in the UK," he said.

Mrs Hodge also sharply criticised HM Revenue and Customs chief executive Lin Homer over the way her staff interpreted the law in relation to companies like Google.

"It is an issue of judgement," she said. "I think your judgement belies common sense. We don't trust your judgement. I think your staff are being bamboozled."

Ms Homer, appearing after Mr Brittin, insisted that HMRC was better qualified than MPs to determine what taxes were due.

"That is a matter for the application of expert tax knowledge. I'm afraid that that is something I think we do rather better than a select committee," she said.

"Unless and until you change the law, we cannot collect the tax people would like us to collect."

The hearing came after it was revealed Google had described its London offices on its website as a base for sales teams and advertised dozens of London-based sales vacancies.

Amazon could also now be dragged back to face further questions about its own finances after the new tax figures which emerged on Thursday.

It is believed the company was able to report the relatively small corporate income tax bill because its sales to British customers are routed through a Luxembourg affiliate, Amazon EU Sarl.

The £2.4m paid in corporation tax in the UK is less than the amount it receives in UK Government grants which stands at £2.5m.

A report last December by the PAC accused Google and Amazon, along with Starbucks, of "immorally" minimising their UK tax bills.

The firms were criticised for the "unconvincing and, in some cases, evasive" evidence they gave on why their corporation tax payments are so low.

A Google spokesman said: "As we have always said, we fully comply with all of the tax rules in the UK.

"We stand behind Matt Brittin's testimony over the course of two sessions in front of Parliament, and we disagree with the committee's view of our tax structure."

• Related Stories
• Amazon Paid £2.4m Tax On £4.2bn Sales In 2012
• Tax Avoidance: MPs Slam 'Insider' Accountants
• Deloitte Boss Blames Law For Tax Avoidance

EU referendum: Tory MP will take forward bill - BBC News

16 May 2013 Last updated at 13:47 ET

James Wharton explains taking on the EU bill a day after warning against too much talk about Europe

A bill paving the way for a referendum on the UK's EU membership will be introduced by a Conservative MP.

Eurosceptic James Wharton topped a ballot of backbenchers which allows him to introduce his own legislation.

He will have full Tory support to bring forward a bill outlining the terms of a referendum to be held by 2017.

Private member's bills face a struggle to become law and the Conservative EU bill is likely to be opposed by the Lib Dems and Labour.

But Downing Street said Mr Cameron was "very pleased" and would ensure the bill was given "the full support of the Conservative Party". Conservative MPs will be under a three-line whip, the strongest order a party can give, to support the measure.

'Self indulgent'

Chancellor George Osborne said he and Mr Cameron would make sure Conservative MPs got behind the bill, adding: "We are going to try to persuade rebel MPs from other parties to back us. And look, when the dust settles people can see that the Conservative Party wants to give the British people an 'in-out' choice on our membership in Europe."

Vince Cable, Business Secretary: "It's doing the country serious damage... because of the uncertainty all of this is creating"

But his Lib Dem cabinet colleague, Business Secretary Vince Cable, hit out at the "self-indulgent" row about Europe which, he said, was already doing "serious damage" to the UK by putting off potential investors and was "getting in the way of government".

"This is not about having a democratic debate... it is about allowing Conservative backbenchers to continue this endless civil war that they have had in their party for 20 years."

The draw to select 20 MPs who can bring in their own bills guarantees decent parliamentary time for the first few.

Stockton South MP Mr Wharton came top. He told the BBC: "It's about time the people had a say and this issue was dealt with properly."

He admitted the parliamentary arithmetic was "difficult" but said it was important that those who believed in the issue took it forward.

Mr Wharton had told the BBC on Wednesday that while Europe was "important", if the Conservatives talked about it "to the exclusion of other things", there was a risk the party would be seen as not talking about "the things people care about".

Asked on Thursday about those comments, he said that by allowing the debate to go ahead, they could get back to focusing on those issues "that really matter to people".

The draft referendum bill he is now taking forward would require a referendum by the end of 2017 on the question: "Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union?"

Queen's Speech 'regret'

It was published by David Cameron earlier this week in an effort to reassure his backbenchers.

But on Wednesday, 116 Conservative MPs, including Mr Wharton, backed a motion put forward by Eurosceptic Conservatives to "regret" the lack of an EU vote bill in the Queen's Speech.

The move was defeated by 277 votes to 131, as Lib Dems and Labour opposed it.

Gary O'Donoghue explains the hurdles and help ahead for Mr Wharton's EU referendum private member's bill

Senior Tories denied the result amounted to a rebellion but Labour said it was a big blow to Mr Cameron's authority.

Including tellers - the MPs who count the votes - 133 MPs supported the amendment.

'Calamitous mistake'

They included 11 Labour MPs, four Democratic Unionists, Lib Dem MP John Hemming and Respect's George Galloway.

The draft referendum bill now taken up by Mr Wharton could not be introduced by the government as it is not supported by the Lib Dems.

Deputy Prime Minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said his party would oppose Mr Wharton's bill.

"Of course we are not going to support an internal Conservative debate which is all about the Conservative Party trying to protect its flank against the threat from the UK Independence Party," he told the BBC.

And Eurosceptic MP John Baron said, while he would be supporting Mr Wharton's bill and the Conservatives would "rally round" it, there was a danger that expectations would be raised only for the bill to fail in the face of opposition from other parties.

Other MPs who did well in the private member's bill ballot will also get the chance to bring forward their own legislation.

Labour MP Paul Blomfield came second, Conservative Jonathan Lord was third and Conservative Sheryll Murray - who successfully got a private member's bill through Parliament last year - came fourth.

Tory Dan Byles, Labour's Sir Alan Meale and Labour's Andrew Gwynne came fifth, six and seventh respectively. The top seven are usually allocated a day's debate - giving their bills the best chance of becoming law.

The last two ballots have, by chance, been topped by the Labour MP John McDonnell - but both his proposed bills failed to make it into law.

Disability benefit assessments 'unfair', says ex-worker - BBC News

16 May 2013 Last updated at 12:27 ET By Sophie Hutchinson BBC News

A doctor who worked for the private company which assesses people for disability benefits says its methods are "unfair".

Greg Wood, a former Royal Navy doctor, resigned from Atos earlier this month, after working as an assessor for two-and-a-half years.

He told the BBC the system was "skewed against the claimant".

But Atos Healthcare says it submits "clinically justified reports" and completely refutes Dr Wood's claims.

Atos, which has been criticised in the past by disability campaigners and MPs, carries out work capability assessments (WCAs) on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Claimants have to score a required number of points in order to qualify for the full sickness benefit under the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

In a statement, Atos said: "We never ask healthcare professionals to make any changes to a report unless there are specific clinical quality issues identified within it.

"We do not deviate from government guidelines in our training. We do not have targets for getting people on or off benefits.

"We have a large team of fully trained doctors, nurses and physiotherapists who provide a professional and compassionate service through what we recognise can be a difficult and emotional process for people...

"We are a professional and ethical organisation."

'Compelled to speak'

In an interview with the BBC, Dr Wood says he believes Atos assessors are not free to make truly independent recommendations.

He said he felt compelled to speak out because it was "embarrassing to be associated with this shambles".

Continue reading the main story

Case study

Ema Hackett, 24, has a mid-range disability and is unable to work. A trained graphic designer, she has Hypermobility Syndrome which makes her joints abnormally flexible. She lives with chronic pain and also suffers from mental health problems.

She has a carer who comes in once a day to help with household chores and cook her dinner.

In the past three years, she has twice been rejected for full sickness benefit following assessments and twice she's successfully challenged the decision through Atos' internal appeal system.

"It feels like not only am I fighting my body to get up everyday, but I'm also fighting the system to get the money I need just to exist.

"I don't have a frivolous life. I don't really ask for much - I just want enough to live a normal life.

"The letters from the Department for Work and Pensions come in a brown envelope with a certain address on the back. Any brown envelope I look at the back and if it's from the Department for Work and Pensions, I'm scared."

"It's very unfair on the people making claims, they deserve a fair assessment and as a taxpayer I'm pretty cheesed off about the £100m plus that's being sprayed away on this dog's breakfast," he said.

The assessments - or fit to work tests - sparked protests from disability campaigners after their introduction in 2010.

But Dr Wood has criticised some of the tests which he says contain "dubious concepts and shaky reasoning".

He claims assessors are told that if a claimant can walk from the kitchen to the sitting room, it proves they can walk 200m (650ft); and if a person can dress themselves once during the day that is proof they have enough concentration and motivation to hold down a job.

He insists these rules are not published in handbooks and guides, instead they are simply spoken about in training sessions.

Mr Gibson said the rules detailed by Dr Wood were incorrect and several questions were asked to build up a complete picture, alongside the medical evidence.

Dr Wood, who was given special responsibility to champion mental health at Atos, said: "I was instructed to change my reports, to reduce the number of points that might be awarded to the claimants. I felt that was wrong professionally and ethically.

"My view is the government has tried to catch more people in the net than the current test allows by pulling strings behind the scenes to get the result they most desire," he added.

Mr Gibson said a report was only changed if there was insufficient medical evidence to back it up.

There were "no targets to take people off benefits" and that had always been the case, he added.

'Highest level'

Dr Wood says the people being most adversely affected by the system have significant, mid-ranging disabilities, such as Parkinson's disease, mental illness, and head and spinal injuries.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

The percentage of people entitled to ESA is now at its highest level "

End Quote Department for Work and Pensions

He also claims some of the most severely disabled people are being asked to attend face-to-face assessments, instead of the normal practice of examining their application on paper.

He says he saw a lot of people who had suffered severe strokes and brain damage.

"There was a man with a motor neurone condition who I actually put in the terminal illness group," he said. "He should not have come for a face-to-face assessment. It was cruel and he was hopping mad."

The DWP said between March and May 2012, 58% of decisions to award the full sickness benefit were made on paper only, so did not require a face-to-face assessment.

Employment minister Mark Hoban says the evidence speaks for itself.

"When we came to Office one in 10 people were getting the highest level of support. That has now gone up to three in 10," he told the BBC.

"What's important to me is to make sure the decisions which are made are good quality decisions and people are getting the right support."

He said the assessments had undergone several independent reviews and were devised in conjunction with health professionals and charities.

"The percentage of people entitled to ESA is now at its highest level with over half of people completing an assessment eligible for the benefit," a DWP spokesman added.

Labour MP Tom Greatrex, who has asked a series of Commons questions on the assessments, said Dr Wood's allegations were "serious and shocking" and he had written to the prime minister asking for an investigation.

"The head-in-the-sand approach Tory ministers are adopting isn't good enough," he said.

"They need to get a grip on this chaotic process which is not only causing misery for some of the most vulnerable members of our society, but also costing taxpayers a fortune at a time when we can least afford it."

Atos senior vice president Wayne Gibson told the BBC it was "surprised and concerned that someone thinks we are unethical".

"We don't make the decision about who gets a benefit or not.

"Our role in the process is to do an assessment, gather the medical evidence and write a report that goes to the department, upon which they can gather more evidence and make a decision."

In a later statement, the company said the claims were "false and damaging".

It added: "Clinical judgement is the foundation of our part of the Work Capability Assessment process. We send the DWP independent, clinically justified reports to help the department's decision makers make a decision on benefit entitlement...

"We are a professional and ethical organisation which has carried out this work on behalf of the department for over a decade.

"Atos Healthcare conducts its business based on a code of ethics and a strong legal compliance culture."

Have you been assessed by Atos for disability benefits? What was your experience of the process? Please get in touch using the form below.

Former Lulzsec hacker Jake Davis on his motivations - BBC News

16 May 2013 Last updated at 11:23 ET By Susan Watts Newsnight Science editor, BBC News

LulzSec hacker Jake Davis: 'The internet is a world devoid of empathy'

Four men were sentenced on Thursday for computer hacking. In 2011 they were all linked to the Lulzsec hacking collective which targeted organisations including the FBI and Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in a 50-day campaign which wreaked havoc across the internet.

Among those sentenced was Lulzsec's self-appointed PR man, Jake Davis, who in his first TV interview has spoken to BBC Newsnight's Susan Watts about what he did and why.

Jake Davis, who went by the online alias Topiary, says he now regrets "95% of the things I've ever typed on the internet".

"It was my world, but it was a very limited world. You can see and hear it, but you can't touch the internet. It's a world devoid of empathy - and that shows on Twitter, and the mob mentality against politicians and public figures. There is no empathy.

"So it was my world, and it was a very cynical world and I became a very cynical person."

In the summer of 2011 Davis was Lulzsec's de facto head of communications, running the group's Twitter feed.

At the time, he was a teenager living on the remote Shetland Islands. His stepfather had died a few years earlier and his mother and brother had moved to England. He was alone.

Davis had become a near recluse, rejecting the real world in favour of internet chat rooms.

"At the time I was 17 or 18-years-old, quite mentally unstable, and in a bad place," he says of that period.

"At times I could see through the haze of the internet and could see there would be consequences, but it was more a case of 'who cares if there are consequences?' I just want to live in the moment."

Online persona

Lulzsec emerged as a splinter group of the Anonymous hacking group in May 2011.

Its members employed techniques to flood websites with high traffic - known as DDoS attacks - in order to render them unusable.

There were many Lulzsec associates, but only half a dozen or so central characters.

Aside from Jake Davis, there was Ryan Ackroyd, aka Kayla, and Mustafa al Bassam, aka Tflow in the UK. In the US there was Hector Monsegur, aka Sabu, and Avunit, whose identity is unknown.

In the real world these individuals lived continents apart and never met. Online they adopted colourful characters as they crashed websites and published the data they hacked.

Like Anonymous, they wanted information on the internet to be free. But Lulzsec also wanted to have a laugh.

The group's name stood for Lulz Security - in which "Lulz" is derived from the popular internet term "lol", meaning to "laugh out loud".

Target choice

Their targets were an eclectic mix, only loosely political, often prankish in nature.

Members of the group have been indicted in the US for allegedly stealing and publishing a database containing details of 70,000 potential contestants for the reality TV singing contest The X Factor.

Here in the UK, some have pleaded guilty to hacking the website of The Sun newspaper, and replacing its front page with a false story declaring that Rupert Murdoch had been found dead in his topiary garden.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

"I thought this hack has gone way too far - there's no point to this thing… This doesn't entertain anybody or help anybody anywhere""

End Quote Former LulzSec hacker Jake Davis, aka Topiary, on Arizona Police attack

The group has been linked to attacks on Sony at a time when the games company was under fire from hackers across the internet angry about what they saw as the company's blasé approach to keeping people's data secure.

A number of law enforcement agencies were also amongst their targets. They crashed the CIA's home site, and sought to embarrass those whose job it is to investigate cybercrime in the UK, SOCA, by forcing their website offline.

On their Twitter feed Lulzsec also boasted about bringing down a website linked to the FBI.

Davis ran that Twitter account, under his alias Topiary - a witty and cock-sure character, which he says was a more self-assured version of himself:

"Aspects of myself went into him," he explains. "It was an exaggerated version of the things I couldn't be. I think Topiary is a lot more confident than I am certainly."

On 24 June 2011, Newsnight spoke to Topiary in an online chat room. He came across as his usual, confident, online self. In reality, he now says, he was in turmoil and describes that day as a turning point.

That was because earlier on that Friday, in the US, Lulzsec members had attacked the Arizona State Police, in protest against tough new laws on immigration. They released private intelligence material, names, addresses and phone numbers of officers, and the content of e-mails.

"I thought this hack has gone way too far - there's no point to this thing, it's just harming police officers… This doesn't entertain anybody or help anybody anywhere," Davis told Newsnight.

Founder turned informer

By then the group was falling apart, and unbeknownst to the world, the FBI had a new weapon. Just prior to the Arizona hack, one of Lulzsec's founders, Hector Monsegur, Sabu, had been arrested. Then, for some 10 months, he turned informer.

Davis was arrested on July 27 2011. His last tweet as Topiary read: "You cannot arrest an idea."

Prior to Thursday's sentencing, Davis had already pleaded guilty to a charge relating to SOCA. He says this was a charge based on a two-line exchange in a chat room:

"I typed tens of thousands of lines of computer text every day and these two little lines are worth a separate charge and are punishable by up to 10 years in prison," he says.

But he concedes that it is what the lines say, rather than how many there are that matters, and says that he now regrets getting involved with the SOCA attack.

"I regret 95% of the things I've ever typed on the internet… especially those two or three lines - 'sure let's go after these people, why not…. It can't hurt,' Obviously it did hurt - both SOCA and myself and others."

Jake Davis: 'If you get sucked into the computer world you can become dependent on it'

DSI Charlie McMurdie, head of the Metropolitan Police's central e-crime unit, said after sentencing that these Lulzsec members had been "running riot, causing significant harm to businesses and people".

She described them as a threat to the thousands of internet users whose logins and passwords they made public. She said the group's recklessness with confidential material could very well have threatened people's lives.

She described it as one of the most significant cases the unit has prosecuted and should serve as a warning to those who use the internet to commit cyber acts.

Most of the Lulzsec collective's key players have now been arrested. Monsegur is awaiting trial in the US, charged with crimes that, in theory, mean he could face 124 years behind bars.

Other key UK members - including Davis - have been indicted in the US, so far no request for extradition has been made.

Now, Davis has a simple message for young people who might consider his online activities worth copying:

"I would say if you have a passion and an outlet for creativity, try and do something beyond the front door. Because if you get sucked into that computer world, you get dependent on it, and if you're dependent on it, it's very hard to say no to things that you may later come to regret."

Watch Susan Watts' film in full on Newsnight on Thursday 16 May 2013 at 2230 on BBC Two and then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.

UBS fined $1.5bn for Libor rigging - BBC News

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Visual artist Nam June Paik predicted internet age - BBC News

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