Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1520
- 1539)
TUESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 1998
MS ANN
GRANT and MR
CRAIG MURRAY
1520. Then why did you warn him so strongly
that he must not do so?
(Mr Murray) I did not. He asked me what the legal
position was with regard to a third party sending arms to Sierra
Leone. I explained that for a third party to do that would be
illegal in terms of international law and Tim Andrews read out
the relevant part of the Security Council Resolution and I explained
it. He then asked about himself supplying night vision equipment
and I warned him he could not do it and I warned him strongly
it was because it would be illegal. Plainly, if someone asks me
whether they can do something and it is illegal, I have an absolute
duty to warn them strongly and I do not quite see the problem
with that.
1521. What you are saying, therefore, is
that Mr Spicer did not reveal to you on that date that the contract
existed. How is it, therefore, that Mr Penfold had a copy of that
contract and that had not reached you?
(Mr Murray) You may recall that Mr Penfold denied
that he had been given a copy of the contract by Mr Spicer at
the meeting on 23 December. No, no copy of the contract and no
news of the existence of the contract had reached me by 19 January.
1522. So you felt that the allegations that
had been made way back in August were just spurious?
(Mr Murray) I had not personally seen those allegations.
The first I saw of them was when I saw a letter from Lord Avebury
which arrived on 5 February addressed to Ann Grant. Ann was currently
out of the country so it came to me. I did not regard the allegation
as spurious. It seemed to me that Lord Avebury's letter contained
very very useful and pertinent information about a company on
whom I had formed deep suspicions. I therefore immediately instructed
that the information be passed on to the relevant criminal authorities.
1523. But Mr Penfold says, in reply to Mr
Rowlands in evidence, page 23, it is the first reply, "I
told the officials exactly what I heard from President Kabbah,
that President Kabbah was contemplating signing an agreement with
a firm called Blackstone which in return for mining concessions
was making available 10 million dollars to a company called Sandline."
All the evidence we have received is suggesting that any contract
of 10 million dollars must have been covering arms; it was not
just going to be for tinned beans.
(Mr Murray) There are two points in answer to
that question. The first is that the officials concerned, Tim
Andrews and Lynda St Cooke, are both quite firm that nothing was
told to them on 23 December of a contract between Kabbah and Sandline.
1524. So Mr Penfold is not telling the truth
here, is he?
(Mr Murray) He appears not to have a memory which
conforms with the memory of the two officials here.
1525. Are you saying Mr Penfold is not telling
the truth?
(Mr Murray) I am saying that the two officials
he claims to have told have no recollection of him telling them
that. As to whether or not the contract of $10 million necessarily
involves arms, I would say no, it does not necessarily do that
at all. I would refer you to the situation with ECOMOG in Liberia.
The ECOMOG force in Liberia is in fact the same ECOMOG force as
in Sierra Leone, the two neighbouring countries and this force
has shifted across the border. The ECOMOG force in Liberia received
very substantial support from an American firm called Pacific
& Atlantic Engineers who looked after its logistic support,
and an element of training. It basically provided all the logistics
to enable that force to function but specifically never supplied
arms. That operation in support of ECOMOG in Liberia was funded
by a number of other governments, including the US Government,
the German and Dutch Governments, and these governments were very,
very careful to make sure that the logistic support and training
exercises did not include arms supplies, and that contract had
a value which I recall as being about $26 million a year, so you
cannot affirm from the size of the contract that it necessarily
includes arms, and the concept of a logistic support and training
operation which did not include arms was one which was very familiar
in the region. I must say that the other thing is that the one
thing which was not needed and the last thing that the region
needs is more arms. The region is awash in arms. I have never
seen any reports that the Kamajors for whom these arms were intended
lacked arms. The prospect of a contract for training them and
providing support in transport and logistics which did not include
arms was not actually nonsensical at all; it was perfectly possible
to have a $10 million contract of that nature.
1526. With the meeting on the 3rd December
where it was made clear that arms were being supplied to the Kamajors
and with the meetings in the rest of December, with what Mr Penfold
knew, with the background of what had been told as early as August,
I would say to you do you not think that the two adjournment debates
not in any way highlighting the possibility of these matters was
misleading the House?
(Ms Grant) I assume you are talking about the
debates on the 10th and 12th March.
1527. That is right.
(Ms Grant) The first debate in the House of Lords
was on the question of what had we done, what had HMG done to
help restore democracy in Sierra Leone and it was not about Sandline,
although Sandline was referred to and covered in the briefing,
as I have already admitted, in an inadequate way, it was produced
in a rush, it did not have the prominence certainly that I wish
it had in hindsight now or that perhaps it should have had at
the time. I think the only thing perhaps to help explain my thinking
and the thinking of the other official who prepared the briefing
was that on the 5th February ECOMOG had moved or begun to move
in support of President Kabbah and on the 10th March, the same
day as the debate, the same day as we prepared the briefing, President
Kabbah went into Freetown. We were enormously bucked by the fact
that the policy we had worked for for so long had actually, or
that the aim that we had worked for for so long had succeeded
and we were very concerned in the context of that debate to explain
what had happened and what good news it was that an elected government
had been restored. That was the focus of my effort. The policy
dilemma I had and the difficulties we had in getting the right
kind of tone in the briefing for the House did not focus on Sandline
at all; it focused on the fact that the Nigerians, who had succeeded
in implementing the policy we wanted, had acted without any legal
cover and that was very much the burden and the focus of the work
we did before the debate. We did refer to Sandline, but by that
time, to be honest, it was not an issue of any operational importance.
1528. But, Ms Grant, the Avebury letter
is making specific allegations. You had no knowledge exactly what
Avebury might or might not say in that debate and there is, therefore,
every likelihood in restoring democracy that he would have referred
to aspects that are in the Toronto Globe and Mail and before
that date the Foreign Office had referred, for a breach of the
Order in Council, Sandline to the Restrictive Enforcement Unit.
(Ms Grant) Indeed.
1529. That was not told to Ministers.
(Ms Grant) No, we had referred allegations, as
Mr Murray said and as you have just said, immediately to Customs
& Excise. They were at that stage allegations. As soon as
an investigation was launched, we did inform Ministers, and I
have already—
1530. What date was that?
(Ms Grant) That was on the 30th March.
1531. Not until then?
(Ms Grant) No, not until then.
1532. I would find it very strange as a
Minister if I knew that this was going on, of which there had
only been three other allegations of this in the last 18 months,
according to the replies that I had from the Foreign Office, that
that was not important enough in this new foreign policy that
the Foreign Secretary was holding for this to be referred to him.
(Ms Grant) It certainly was not that we did not
think the allegations were important; we thought they were so
important that we referred them immediately to Customs & Excise.
I have already said that with hindsight I might have told Ministers
earlier about the reference of an allegation and not the launching
of an investigation, although those are quite important distinctions
to me. I would only know that, as the Foreign Secretary said in
his own evidence to the Committee, there had been two previous
references of possible breaches of sanctions to Customs &
Excise I think on Iraq and on Libya and on neither occasion were
they drawn to the attention of Ministers. I think that was wrong
and I think the procedures which have now been put into place
will make sure that does not happen again. They ought automatically
to be referred to Ministers however likely or unlikely they are
to lead to an investigation.
1533. Is it not important enough that the
House is not misled, as I think it might well be claimed, and
certainly in Mr Lloyd's reply to the adjournment debate that no
indication was given of actually what had been going on?
(Ms Grant) We were not ourselves fully aware of
what had been going on. What we had done was refer what evidence
we had and the allegations we had to the authorities with the
competence to find out what had happened.
1534. But the military intelligence reports
which you received made it absolutely clear that there was a matter
of arms and armaments going to Sierra Leone.
(Ms Grant) But who was responsible and who were
involved we were in no position to determine. We had sent the
evidence to Customs & Excise for them to do that and they
launched an investigation on the 30th March.
1535. What I am saying to you is that you
did not allow Ministers to actually inform the House of these
things when these matters were before adjournment debates is a
great worry to me because we rely on Ministers' statements and
I see that you have admitted that this is perhaps an error, but
I hope you will realise how great an error because the House must
rely that it is getting all the facts and that did not really
appear to be the case, did it?
(Ms Grant) I was concerned to get the facts and
it was in my concern to establish the facts perhaps that I held
on to the bits of information that I had from Ministers for a
bit too long and I have admitted that.
Dr Godman
1536. May I say to you, Ms Grant, that I
hope these new procedures will involve giving guidance to officials
in their dealings with mercenaries, but turning to Mr Murray,
my concern in this investigation into what appears to be a bureaucratic
shambles is the dealings of officials of a department of state
with mercenaries. Is it the case that your meeting with Mr or
Colonel Spicer was the very first time you had met and dealt with
a mercenary?
(Mr Murray) Yes, it was.
1537. Despite the fact that in your memorandum
you say that you were working for some eight months on this arms
trafficking project?
(Mr Murray) Yes, that did not involve meeting
any mercenaries.
1538. I know Eric Illsley has been over
this ground, but I would like to come back to a couple of answers
you gave to him. You admitted, I think in a very honest way, that
you had in fact been set up by Sandline. I think that was the
term you used, that you were set up.
(Mr Murray) That is my belief.
1539. It will be in the minutes, and incidentally
I hope your health is much better. You also said that Mr or Colonel
Spicer, and I think we will call him "Mr Spicer", shall
we, was shifty. In your memorandum, you said, and this is paragraph
4, that he was extremely evasive and appeared uncomfortable in
relation to the ownership of Sandline and who was involved in
that, what he calls I think, "private military company",
and what I call a group of mercenaries. The plain contradiction
here is that in paragraph 35 of his statement, SL34, he states
bluntly, "We discussed exporting night vision equipment from
the UK. Mr Murray said that if I could order the equipment from
a mining company, I could use it for whatever purpose I liked
as long as the equipment eventually ended up with a mining company".
Now, as you know, I questioned Mr Spicer on this. I asked him
if he thought he was being given something of a nod and a wink
here, that he was being advised that there was a way round the
regulations. However, in your memorandum, you state equally bluntly,
"Spicer then said that Sandline themselves might wish to
bring into Sierra Leone night vision equipment that was employed
both in mining and helicopters (sic). How could such dual-use
equipment be exported to Sierra Leone? I said it couldn't".
Now, you have also said that Mr Spicer has not been telling the
truth. We, in the west of Scotland, might call him a bit of a
chancer, but what you are suggesting here is that he is a liar.
(Mr Murray) I do not want to get into—
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