British soldiers interrogated detainees before mass execution

British soldiers interrogated dissidents in Oman before nearly a dozen of the men were executed in 1973, newly discovered files show.

Although Britain had abolished the death penalty for almost all offences four years prior to the executions, UK troops on loan to the Sultan of Oman were embroiled in his own use of capital punishment.

Sultan Qaboos , a Gulf autocrat, relied on British help to capture around 90 people in 1972-73 suspected of being part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG).

They were a left-wing group which sought democracy, women’s liberation and socialism in the southern Dhufar region of Oman.

The PFLOAG was seen as a threat to British oil interests in Oman, a Gulf state which controls half of the Strait of Hormuz.

The crackdown, codenamed Operation Jason, saw a temporary interrogation centre established in Sur, 100 kilometres away from the capital Muscat.

As part of Operation Jason, the British sent over a Major R Willingale from the Royal Signals to lead a six man “intelligence collation team”. [1]

Although Willingale was formally there to install monitoring equipment in the interrogation rooms at Sur, the team was still allowed to conduct “secondary questioning” of which would apparently “not include any form of ill-treatment.”

Britain had previously tortured other detainees in Oman in 1971. This time, the British personnel could only put “gentlemanly” questioning to over 77 rebels accused of plotting an insurrection.

There appear to be no detailed records from the interrogation in the UK National Archives.

However, PFLOAG officials claimed in their weekly pamphlets that “brutal torture operations” led to a number of individuals facing “amputations in addition to the development of various diseases”, and that a pregnant woman held in detention had died as a result of the “torture practised by the British and Jordanian intelligence services.”

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Executed

Sultan Qaboos went on to approve the death penalty for several of the rebels interrogated by British officers on loan to his army.

Declassified has cross-referenced records in the National Archives with those published by legal scholars in Oman to identify the names of 11 of those executed. The full list is below. [2]

One of the men, Hamad Majid Al-Mukhaini, had previously been a lieutenant in the Sultan’s Armed Forces, but “off-hand treatment by British officers” caused him to defect to the PFLOAG, according to the British ambassador to Oman, Donald Hawley.

It took only one day of court proceedings for the judge, Sayyid Sultan Bin Hamoud Al-Busaidi, to sentence those 11 people to death in June 1973.

Ambassador Hawley’s meagre attempts to appeal to Qaboos for clemency of those convicted were entirely unsuccessful.

It appears that the goal was in-fact to cover their own backs. “We should not wish any British personnel, whether contract, seconded or BATT [British Army Training Team] to be involved in executions,” Douglas-Home wrote to Hawley.

They were all executed a week later, despite the PFLOAG’s threat being greatly exaggerated.

“All the indications are that [the PFLOAG] was in no shape to organise the overthrow of the present regime,” according to British diplomat Sir Terence Clarke writing back to the Foreign Office.

Sultan Qaboos met Britain’s then prime minister, Conservative Edward Heath , in Downing Street three months after the executions.

The PFLOAG eventually lost the Dhufar war, leaving Sultan Qaboos to rule Oman for half a century.

The UK ambassador to Muscat would explain in 1980 that control of the “oil-important Straits of Hormuz, is what the Dhufar War was all about.”

NOTES:

[1] UK intelligence team was composed of: JE Gooch (chief technician, RAF), Sergeant RJ Yarnell, Sergeant R Bumstead, Sergeant JA Ryles and Sergeant DA Langham.

[2] The men executed were: Hamad Majid Al-Mukhaini, Khalfan Salem Al-Wahibi, Ali Thani Khalaf Al-Jamoudi, Hamoud Ahmed Al-Rahbi, Mohammed Saeed Saeed Al-Wahibi, Hamoud Hamid Al-Ghasani, Mohammed Talib Sulaiman Al-Busaidi, Mohammed Hashim Al-Tai, Ali Mohammed Salem Al-Marzouqi, Mubarak Hamad Al-Kitani, and Said Abdullah Hamad Al-Alawi.

Note: Arabic names might differ in spelling following translation into English

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