On Hiroshima anniversary, MoD refuses to say whether troops were used in human radiation experiments

Daily Mirror

3 days ago

The Nuked Blood Scandal has worsened as ministers fail to deny that troops WERE used in radiation experiments, with a lifelong impact on them and their families
Ministers have failed to deny that British and Commonwealth troops were deliberately exposed to radiation during Cold War weapons tests.
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They have told Parliament that they do not know whether allegations servicemen were used as nuclear "guinea pigs" are true or not, 11 months after launching an internal review into the Nuked Blood Scandal.
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It comes as politicians worldwide marked the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of the Second World War. Less than a decade later, Britain detonated its first nuclear weapon, the first of 45 bombs and 600 radiation experiments in Australia and the Pacific.
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Seventy years later the Mirror uncovered evidence of the Nuked Blood Scandal, a series of orders for blood and urine testing, and chest x-rays, of troops before, during and after service at the weapon trials. The results have subsequently been found to be missing from personnel files, and are now subject of a criminal complaint and £5bn civil lawsuit.
Veteran John Morris, 87, of Rochdale, has been told there is no trace of the results of blood tests he was subjected to at Christmas Island in 1957. He said: "How can they say they do not know if there were experiments when they've been sitting on the evidence all along.
"They are moral cowards, too scared to open what they know will be an expensive can of worms. It's the survivors and children of Hiroshima still fighting to make people aware of what happened there, and the same is true of our families. We're not going away, so they might as well 'fess up."
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* You can support the nuclear veterans' fight for justice HERE
The Mirror's investigation has found the names of hundreds of soldiers called up for testing, and some of the biological data gathered, have since been discovered on a top secret database at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, locked on the grounds of national security.
Ministers have ordered the records be published, but despite reviewing 1.1million pages of evidence have rejected calls to tell Parliament what they have found.
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In April, former Tory minister Lord Nick Bourne asked the Ministry of Defence to state "whether troops have ever been subject to human radiation experiments" and details of the dates, locations and aftercare if it was given. Defence Minister Lord Vernon Coaker told him "it is taking time to collate the required information" and he'd reply later.
This week, when Lord Bourne asked again, Lord Coaker replied: "Officials have reviewed over 43,000 files... as part of the exercise that is looking at concerned raised with me about some nuclear test veterans' records. I will update the House when we are in a position to share the findings of the exercise."
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Alan Owen of campaign group LABRATS, who has been unlawfully denied access to his own father's medical records, said: "If they cannot state definitively, after almost a year of looking at the files, that experiments did not take place, then either the review has found evidence to suggest it did happen, or they're looking at this stuff with their eyes closed.
"Either way, veterans are dying without the answers and Parliament is not being told the degree of financial and political liability the government faces, and which increases every day. For this denial to continue even as the world acknowledges the horrors of Hiroshima and we face our own renewed nuclear threats is an act of self-harm on the part of the government."
Campaigners are expecting to meet the Defence Secretary next month for an update on the records review and a promised expansion of medal criteria.