LONDON (Dispatches) – Human rights groups have called on the British government to explain whether the secretive Menwith Hill intelligence base in Yorkshire is involved in recent drone strike assassinations, after the publication of a report seen by the Guardian that raises questions about UK involvement in U.S. attacks.
The research concludes it “was probable” that Iran’s anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in January last year using information obtained from the British site, essentially an outpost of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
It also raises questions about whether British personnel on the site are involved in assisting deadly U.S. drone strikes – in particular in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, all conflict zones where the UK is not formally at war.
Barnaby Pace, an investigative journalist, complains in the report that the U.S. and UK forces at Menwith Hill “operate beyond public scrutiny and accountability” – and that, unless there were changes, “Orwellian surveillance systems and extrajudicial executions exposed in recent years will likely continue”.
Menwith Hill is eight miles west of Harrogate on the fringes of the Yorkshire Dales, known for its distinctive large white golf ball domes housing radar equipment. Although nominally an RAF base, it is in fact the largest known overseas site of the NSA, with 600 U.S. personnel and 500 British civilians on site.
Leaked documents from the Snowden files have shown that Menwith Hill is part of an eavesdropping network, able to collect data from hundreds of millions of emails and phone calls daily and of

pinpointing phones on the ground.
“Intelligence programs at Menwith Hill have reportedly played a key role in operations to ‘eliminate’ people in Yemen, as part of a deadly drone bombing campaign that has resulted in dozens of civilian deaths in a country that neither the UK nor U.S. has declared war with,” Pace said.
In light of the leaks, Pace concludes it was likely that Menwith Hill had a role to play in the assassination of General Soleimani in January 2020, an action that briefly threatened to plunge the U.S. into a wider conflict with Iran. British ministers have refused to comment on whether the Yorkshire base did have a role in the drone strike, in the light of a longstanding policy that “we do not comment on the details of the operations carried out at RAF Menwith Hill”.
But Pace argued that such secrecy raises serious questions. “The involvement of the UK and Menwith Hill in an assassination that threatened to spark a war should be of great concern. The UK government’s failure to assure the public that the base was not involved raises deep questions about the accountability for actions at the base,” he wrote.
Last year, a senior Iranian Judiciary official said British security services firm GS4 had been linked to General Soleimani’s assassination.
Agents of the company handed the information of General Soleimani and his entourage to the U.S. as soon as they entered Baghdad airport.
General Soleimani was visiting Baghdad at the official invitation of the Iraqi government where he was assassinated, along with his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units, and their other companions.
Both commanders were highly popular because of the key role they played in eliminating the Daesh terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
On Saturday, head of the Zionist regime’s military intelligence Major General Tamir Hayman said the assassination of General Soleimani was “one of the most significant and important events in my time”.
In an interview with Walla news website, he said the Iranian general was the man who designed, approved and acted against Israel.
General Soleimnai, Hayman said, had a strategic vision and operational capacity where he could get things done in Syria in a short period of time.
“He was also the designer of Syria — that’s the bigger story. There are not many people like him,” Hayman said.