Families of those killed in RAF helicopter crash on Isle of Mull demand answers
THE families of those killed in a Chinook helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994 have demanded the release of documents that have been sealed for 100 years, saying they 'deserve answers' about what really happened.
RAF Chinook ZD576 was carrying 25 British intelligence personnel from RAF Aldergrove in Northern Ireland to a conference at Fort George near Inverness when it crashed in foggy weather on June 2, 1994.
All 25 passengers – made up of personnel from MI5, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army – were killed, along with the helicopter's four crew members.
The incident remains one of the RAF's worst peacetime losses of life.
READ MORE:
Nearly 31 years on from the crash, many of the bereaved families have written an open letter to the Government renewing calls for a public inquiry into the incident.
They have also called for the full release of documents that have been locked away until 2094 by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), something revealed in a BBC documentary last year.
Andy Tobias, who was eight when his father Lt Col John Tobias, 41, was killed, said the 'secrecy' raises questions about what really happened.
'I lost my father, and part of my childhood, because he was put on board a helicopter that had been deemed unairworthy and should never have taken off,' he said, speaking publicly about the incident for the first time.
'In my view, it's nothing short of corporate manslaughter.
'I have tried for many years to put this crash, and my family's unnecessary loss, behind me – but learning that the MoD has sealed away the archive until after all of us will be long gone seriously raises my concerns about what really happened and who knew what.
'Why the secrecy? Why did my father and 28 others die? We want answers.'
A memorial
Following the crash, the Chinook's pilots, Flight Lieutenants Richard Cook and Jonathan Tapper, were accused of gross negligence, but this verdict was overturned by the UK Government 17 years later, following a campaign by the families.
A subsequent review by Lord Philip set out 'numerous concerns' raised by those who worked on the Chinooks, with the MoD's testing centre at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire declaring the Chinook Mk2 helicopters 'unairworthy' prior to the crash.
Esme Sparks, who was just seven when her father Major Gary Sparks lost his life, said it had been a 'shock' to learn about the existence of the documents.
'Why on earth would they be sealed for so long if there was not something being hidden? Who or what is being protected?,' she said, also speaking publicly for the first time.
'My whole family wants answers and action because my daddy was denied his right to life – put in danger by the MoD on an aircraft deemed not airworthy.
'We are furious that the Government and the MoD is refusing to listen or to meet us.
'Our request for a meeting with the defence minister was summarily dismissed with platitudes. What happened to their duty of candour promises?'
The open letter states the Chinook Justice Campaign – which includes most of the bereaved families – formally requested a public inquiry on October 9 2024, but that this was rejected by the minister for veterans and people Alistair Carns on December 17.
It adds that the minister has not yet responded to a subsequent request for a meeting.
The letter also describes the 'huge concern and upset' the sealed documents have caused to the bereaved families.
'The papers will not be released until 2094, long after the spouses and children of those killed have themselves passed away,' it states.
'It is unbearable to us as bereaved families to know that this sealed information could give us the answers we need.'
The letter adds: 'Wives, children, and families left behind deserve answers about why our loved ones never came home.
'They would never have boarded the helicopter had they known it was not airworthy.
'They would have had long, full lives and would have lived to see their children and grandchildren grow up.'
The MoD has been approached for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
MoD ‘dishonest' to call 1994 Chinook crash an accident, say families
The families of people killed in the 1994 Chinook helicopter disaster have criticised the Ministry of Defence's description of the crash as a 'tragic accident' as 'dishonest, deceitful and disingenuous'. RAF Chinook ZD576 was carrying 25 British intelligence personnel from RAF Aldergrove in Northern Ireland to a conference at Fort George near Inverness when it crashed in foggy weather on June 2 1994 on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland. All 25 passengers – made up of personnel from MI5, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army – were killed, along with the helicopter's four crew members. The families of those who died said earlier this month that they were beginning legal action against the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for not ordering a public inquiry. They want a High Court judge to be able to review information which they say was not included in previous investigations, and which they believe will shed new light on the airworthiness of the helicopter. The families, who have coalesced into the Chinook Justice Campaign, said failing to order a public inquiry is a breach of the UK Government's human rights obligations. An MoD spokesperson said: 'The Mull of Kintyre crash was a tragic accident, and our thoughts and sympathies remain with the families, friends and colleagues of all those who died. 'We have received a pre-action protocol letter from the Chinook Justice Campaign and are considering our response. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to comment further.' Solicitor Mark Stephens, who is representing the families, said: 'The statements issued by the Ministry of Defence in recent days are so blatantly at odds with the facts as we now know them that they have caused immense upset to the families and cast a further cruel and disgraceful shadow on this ongoing travesty of justice. 'We know that the RAF helicopter carrying the 29 service personnel who were killed, serving their country, had been grounded because of fatal flaws in the software on board. 'For the MoD to claim that this was a 'tragic accident' flies in the face of the facts and is blatantly and disgracefully at odds with the truth. 'It is nothing short of dishonest, deceitful and disingenuous and we demand a retraction.' The families have also called for the release of documents that were sealed at the time of the crash for 100 years, something revealed in a BBC documentary last year. The MoD has said that records held in the National Archives contain personal information and early release of those documents would breach their data protection rights. Mr Stephens said: 'For the Government to believe that data protection laws were designed to protect someone who is living – and who may have made a dreadful decision that night – rather than the truth emerging over 29 service personnel who were killed in an unairworthy aircraft, is a total abomination. 'This decision must be overturned, these files must be seen by a judge, and we will fight this in court if necessary.' Niven Phoenix, a commercial pilot whose father Ian was one of the senior RUC officers killed in the crash, said: 'This was about as far from a tragic accident as you could get. Locking the files away until we are all dead proves there is a cover-up about something. 'The MoD's statement that these files have been sealed to protect third party interests is yet another disingenuous, distasteful and outright dishonest assertion designed to hide the truth using data protection laws which only came into force in the UK long after the crash. 'The Government would prefer for all the children of the Chinook victims to die like their parents rather than provide access, answers and take accountability for past mistakes. This is not the duty of candour promised by Keir Starmer in his election manifesto.' Following the crash, the Chinook's pilots, Flight Lieutenants Richard Cook and Jonathan Tapper, were accused of gross negligence, but this verdict was overturned by the UK Government 17 years later, following a campaign by the families. A subsequent review by Lord Philip set out 'numerous concerns' raised by those who worked on the Chinooks, with the MoD's testing centre at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire declaring the Chinook Mk2 helicopters 'unairworthy' prior to the crash.
New York Times
9 hours ago
- New York Times
Homes and Shops Burn in Northern Ireland in Riot Over Sexual Assault Case
The police in Northern Ireland have condemned an outbreak of disorder in the town of Ballymena on Monday night in which 15 officers were injured and houses and shops were set on fire. Officers came under 'sustained attack' for several hours, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which said in a statement that rioters, many of whom were masked, had thrown petrol bombs, fireworks, heavy masonry and bricks at the police. The statement added that attacks on several houses and businesses, in which some had windows and doors smashed and others were set on fire, were being investigated as racially motivated hate attacks. Three people were evacuated from four homes that were set alight, and some of the 15 officers who were injured required hospital treatment. The violence followed the appearance in court earlier on Monday of two 14-year-old boys who had been charged with serious sexual assault of a teenage girl on Saturday night. Both boys have been charged with attempted oral rape and deny the charges, the BBC reported, adding that they had confirmed their names and ages through a Romanian interpreter. A planned demonstration in Ballymena over the case began at about 7:30 p.m. on Monday. Crowds of people made their way through the town and toward the scene of the alleged assault, Clonavon Terrace. The police said that the procession was 'initially peaceful' and officers were present because of the large number of people who had gathered. But later a number of masked individuals broke away and began to build barricades, stockpiling missiles and attacking properties, the police added. Far-right groups and influencers on social media had amplified news of the assault case and celebrated the violence. Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson said: 'The shocking scenes of disorder on the streets of Ballymena have to be condemned in the strongest terms.' 'I would strongly urge anyone who was involved in yesterday's rioting and disorder to think long and hard about their actions,' he added. 'Violence and disorder will only place people at greater risk.' A 29-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of riotous and disorderly behavior and other offenses. The police said they were also investigating reports of a petrol bomb attack in the village of Cullybackey, around three miles away, shortly after midnight on Tuesday. A vehicle was set on fire and a nearby property, with a woman and two children inside, was damaged, in what investigators are treating as a racially motivated hate crime.
Forbes
9 hours ago
- Forbes
How Similar Are Whisky Cask Investment Firms To Scammers Of The Past?
In an article on the blog of whisky retailer Master of Malt, former Diageo executive, archivist and whisky historian Dr. Nick Morgan provides examples of promises made by Scotch whisky cask investment firms to the general public: '15 – 30% capital growth per annum'; 'in four years your matured whisky may double in value'; 'malt whisky investment shows an average profit of 50% at maturity.' They sound awfully similar to ads from Scotch whisky cask investment companies that I've come across too: 'Cask whisky saw 15.86% growth in 2022'; '12% typical annual returns', '36.3% return in 3 years', 'a strong asset with the potential for significant capital appreciation' The difference? Morgan's examples are from the late 1960s and 1970s, when prospective investors not involved with the whisky industry were lured into investing into whisky casks - and fell for schemes where all their money was lost. My examples come from Scotch whisky cask investment ads that have shown up on my social media feed within the last year. All these promises past and present form part a pattern that repeats itself every 25 years and it has a familiar script - a new crop of upstart companies enter the whisky industry and tell prospective whisky investors unfamiliar with the market that putting money into Scotch whisky casks will deliver high profits at low risk. The reality is much different. The majority of investors who put their money into such schemes in the past lost everything or were left with casks not worth nearly the value that they were promised. It happened in the 1970s, in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and it's starting to happen again now. However, thanks to new technology and social media the scale at which the current crop of Scotch whisky cask investment firms operates is truly impressive. Morgan warned me that he believes that the dangers of fraud are larger than ever: 'Compared to the previous two [periods where scams took place] A court case from 1973, SEC v. Haffenden-Rimar International, involved defendants charged with selling unlicensed securities under the guise of whisky investments. Investors were told their money would grow as the whisky aged—but many of the casks either didn't exist or had been misrepresented. The scam resurfaced in the late 1990s and early 2000s with companies like Hamilton Spirit Management and Marshall Wineries. These firms used phone sales and print ads to attract investors, promoting casks at heavily marked-up prices and assuring buyers of strong, reliable returns. These casks were often resold multiple times, and when the companies went under, most investors were left with nothing. The promises made to investors today—steady growth, strong returns, a tangible asset—haven't changed for decades. The pillars of how these scams work - either by overcharging for casks and/or not actually providing proper ownership over a cask - remains the same. Morgan sees clear similarities to today: 'Relentless high-pressure sales techniques, inflated promises in terms of return and security of your investment and vastly inflated prices", he noted, 'this is the same palette of sharp practices that was employed 40 or 50 years ago and 20 or 25 years ago is the same one that's been deployed today, but at a higher technological level.' Indeed, the BBC's groundbreaking investigative show and podcast series about whisky cask investment scams, both titled Hunting the Whisky Bandits, revealed how three different firms, Cask Whisky Ltd, Cask Spirits Global Ltd, and Whisky Scotland, recently collapsed after having done the exact same thing to their clients. It's not about cold calls or a reliance on classified ads in the investment sections of newspapers and magazines anymore (though this is also happening today, through ads and sponsored content placed in mainstream publications). Laurence Cook is a producer who worked and was deeply involved with Hunting The Whisky Bandits. In a webinar interview with a consumer protection website I co-founded, he emphasized how today's scammers use digital tools to broaden their reach and sharpen their approach. 'These are people that can build slick websites, slick social media profiles. They're people that are committed to creating content that is targeted.' This expanded reach is translating into significantly more victims. Cook described the process of finding burned investors when he started investigative work for the series: 'There was an incredible human story in this, which was a lot of people had been exploited by a group of people, a fairly large group of people, working with kind of impunity and that was something worth looking into', he said. "We immediately knew was that the scale of this was massive. And secondly, as soon as the team began reaching out to victims, and we started finding people all over the place and in of infinite variety in terms of backgrounds and amounts that they'd invested, we also just found huge numbers of victims." Though his series and podcast only focuses on three firms, Cook is sure that this is just the tip of the iceberg and there are many others operating in the same way today as well. Over the course of his investigation, Cook and his team discovered that at least a few current operators may have been new to cask whisky investment, but aren't new to scam work. He makes chillingly clear the kinds of people who are often involved in this sector: 'It's fairly obvious, once you start digging on a few of them, that there were links to previous commodity scams, you know, be that wine, gold, art, whatever, and that these were people working in with an MO basically of sell a asset that you you tell the customer is a tangible thing that will go up in value, but it's tangible, but they shouldn't touch it. It's taking storage", he explains. "Fine wine was a kind of common denominator across a lot of the people that we looked at. Or they previously had been involved in property abroad, things that basically you have to take on trust in terms of the scale of customers and the scale of loss.' That model, selling an asset that's technically tangible but somewhat out of reach, works well with whisky. Investors usually don't see the casks they supposedly own. If purchasing through a middleman like a cask investment firm, they don't even necessarily safely own them unless they receive a document called a delivery order, which provides real legal proof of ownership under U.K. law. (Technically, clear contact between warehouse and cask owner fulfills that legal ownership requirement, but a D.O. is the industry standard). So far, these are hardly ever actually provided by most Scotch whisky cask investment firms. For those affected, the damage isn't just financial. As Cook pointed out during our webinar, 'We found people who hadn't told their families the true scale of the loss. We found people who are contemplated taking their own lives. We found people who would talk to us for background conversations, but wouldn't talk on air because of the shame that they felt.' There's a reason similar tactics have been used by Scotch whisky cask investment firms from the past and present - their goal has been the same. It is to develop a kind of product that provides them with a profit - and it's not whisky. That is just the lure. The money-making product are investors unfamiliar with the industry who can be squeezed for their cash, using both legal (but ethically suspect) and sometimes illegal means. These investors can be overcharged for casks, and regularly enticed with new products once they are in the sales database of the firm that brought them in. In today's Scotch whisky cask investment 'ecosystems', they can even sell to each other with the middleman cask investment firm facilitating the sale between its two clients, arbitrarily determining sale price and then taking a slice of the resulting transaction. If whisky was the product these firms were offering, and if they truly believed that a fortune can be made from it, then they should be bottling and selling whisky themselves. However, the truth - as any independent whisky bottler will tell you - is that this is actually incredibly hard work. It requires the nous to run a good business, to understand your consumer and your markets, to understand the true industry price of casks, to have the contacts to find genuinely tasty ones, and plenty more besides. It's easier to set up a whisky cask investment firm marketing overpriced, mediocre casks to the general public. However, to keep this kind of operation going requires aggressive sales tactics, slick marketing, and constantly bringing in new prospective clients. The business models of many of these firms resemble and blend together two different types of venerable scam business models - boiler rooms and pyramid schemes. Little wonder it all feels familiar to Morgan: "What they're doing is absolutely identical. The key difference is social media and technology."
