On 5 December 2022, I was poisoned with a lethal toxin called chloral hydrate in central Belgrade. Just after that, a US journalist in Doha covering the World Cup was poisoned with the same obscure toxin while in Doha. His name was Grant Wahl. He and I had in common our intention to uncover the corruption underlying the FIFA Doha World Cup, with a particular emphasis upon investigating the renegade Kuwaiti Royal Family member Ahmed Al-Sabah.
In my case the assassin probably did a quick 'in-and-out' job, supported by local spotters in the vague but dangling employ of the SVR, Russia's increasingly defunct and useless Foreign Intelligence Service. In Doha the assassination was presumably executed pursuant to information supplied by the assassin's own local networks.
Now we can reveal the following information about the assassin. With enough information, we will be able to narrow the culpable individual down to one.
He is a Pakistani national and he has also acquired Qatari nationality (likely through extended residence or by virtue of his employment by the Qatari police - see below).
He is an expert in forgery.-particularly of signatures - as well as assassinations..
He has held one or more Schengen visas.
He is a former member of the Qatari police.
In all likelihood he is a former member of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, where he learned his distinctive skills.
He has flown in and out of Geneva airport in Switzerland.
In all likelihood he flew into Belgrade directly from Doha in one of the few days preceding the date of the poisoning, in order to assess the terrain. It is overwhelmingly likely that he entered Serbia using his Qatari, not his Pakistani, passport. It follows from this that he likely flew with Qatar Airways.
He presumably flew direct to Doha from Belgrade on the first available flight on 5 December 2022 after poisoning me in the early hours of the morning. Again a supposition that he used Qatar Airways would be a reasonable one.
Qatari Airways has one direct flight a day between Belgrade and Doha in each direction. The precise times vary by day; the important point for our purposes is that the flight from Belgrade to Doha typically departs around lunchtime each day. So we should look at the passenger manifest, in the hands of the Serbian and Qatari authorities and of the airline, for the Qatari Airways flight from Belgrade to Doha departing lunchtime Monday 5 December 2022.
He has contacts with a Qatari national called Ali Al-Yafei. Mr Al-Yafei may be in the United Kingdom or in Qatar. If in Britain, he may be an illegal overstayer. Or he may be with Mr Al-Haroun in the Schengen Zone (see below).
Mr Al-Yafei in turn has close contacts with Mr Hamad Al-Haroun, citizen of of Kuwait but currently (astonishingly) enjoying refugee status in the United Kingdom. However it is not obvious that Mr Al-Haroun is currently in the United Kingdom. He was last spotted at his own trial for forgery in Geneva, Switzerland on 21 November 2022, in respect of which a verdict is awaited. A seasoned expert in evading international arrest warrants (the four INTERPOL notices against him have been outstanding for several years), he may still be in Switzerland or he may be at some other location, unknown, in the Schengen Zone, having slipped across Swiss borders at night or on a weekend. This is the intelligence we have received. He is likely in a Schengen Zone country that does not cross-check persons taking overnight accommodation with the SIRENE database of internationally wanted people sought by European authorities (that would most likely locate him in Eastern Europe); or he booked accommodation in the name of another person (possibly that of Mr Al-Yafei, who may be with him); or he acquired accommodation anonymously.
Because he might be spotted at any moment by an efficient Western European country that connects the SIRENE database with all sorts of domestic databases, we consider it more likely that he is in a Schengen jurisdiction with relatively lax standards of domestic cross-checking. These countries are typically central and Eastern European members of the Schengen Zone.
The poisoner used dilapidated Russian intelligence structures in place in Belgrade to prepare the groundwork (such as 'spotting'), something that was arranged by Mr Hamad Al-Haroun as the prime mover in this poisoning operation. Without doubt he paid those Russian intelligence structures money, to facilitate the poisoning he had in mind.
Mr Al-Haroun is a close associate of and principal right hand of Ahmed Al-Sabah. It follows that my poisoning and that of Mr Wahl were orchestrated with a view to silencing those investigating the corrupt conduct of Ahmed Al-Sabah in international sports financing. Given that the toxin used has a lethality rate in excess of 50 per cent, these poisonings constituted the crimes of first-degree murder (Mr Wahl) and attempted murder (me) respectively.
To be continued. We are going to capture this group of murderers.
If you try to poison me, you had better succeed. Because if you don't, I will hunt you down relentlessly. Pursuing the guilty using the law is my business, as an officer of the English court.
Kuwait of course has the death penalty as one of its legal tools of punishing the severest of crimes These events are surely in such a category.