Billy Briggs

Billy Briggs is a freelance investigative journalist based in Scotland, United Kingdom who has reported from many places across the world including Bosnia, Gaza, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Northern Ireland. He focuses on exposing human rights abuses and his articles have been published by - among others - Sunday Mail, Scotland On Sunday, Sunday Herald, The Guardian, New Statesman, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, New Zealand Herald, British Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera. Briggs has won a raft of awards for his journalism including prizes from Amnesty International and the European Union. He is also editor of a news service provided by the International Network of Street Papers and is part of the team behind Scotland's first not-for-profit investigative media organisation, Scottish Inquirer, to be officially launched in January 2015. Aside from reporting, he lectures on journalism for Bauer Academy.

Dominic West Leads Save the Children’s Call for Suspension of UK Arms Sales to Saudis

There can longer be any credibility to the claim that the U.K. promotes human rights and democracy on the world stage, not while it is supporting one of the most abusive regimes in the world while it bombs one of the poorest countries in the world.

Billy Briggs
By Billy Briggs
Dominic West with young Syrian refugees during a visit to Za’atari refugee camp in Mafraq, Jordan. (Photo: Save the Children)

LONDON -- “The Wire” actor Dominic West is leading a new campaign by charity Save the Children calling for the U.K. government to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is fighting a war in Yemen. The charity has produced a video with West that shows a laser-guided Paveway IV bomb -- the type made in Scotland by U.S. firm Raytheon -- emerge from

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US, UK Protect Saudi Arabia From Human Rights Inquiries Despite ‘Clear Evidence Of War Crimes’

Despite assessments that there have been clear violations of international law in the Saudi-led coalition’s war on Yemen, British and American forces continue to supply the coalition with weaponry and help coordinate strikes.

Billy Briggs
By Billy Briggs
A young boy who lost his leg in the Yemen war uses a prosthetic limb at a government-run rehabilitation center in Sanaa, Yemen, Saturday, March 5, 2016. Yemen's conflict pits the government, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis allied with a former president. Yemen's war has killed at least 6,200 civilians and injured tens of thousands of Yemenis, and 2.4 million people have been displaced, according to U.N. figures. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

LONDON --- As pressure builds for the British and American governments to cut ties with the Saudi-led coalition accused of war crimes in Yemen, an aid worker highlighted the trauma faced by children in an escalating crisis the United Nations has deemed a “humanitarian catastrophe.” Fatima Al Ajal, who works with Save the Children in the nation’s

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‘Mercenaries Unleashed’: Report Highlights Threats Posed By Booming Private Security Industry

‘For too long this murky world of guns for hire has been allowed to grow unchecked. In letting the industry regulate itself, the government has failed,’ the executive director of War On Want tells MintPress.

Billy Briggs
By Billy Briggs
Private military firm, European Security Academy, carries out a training exercise. Britain's $560 million a year mercenary industry is booming as governments and corporations seek to 'evade responsibility for the use of violent and often deadly force.’ (Photo: YouTube Screenshot)

LONDON --- In a new report, a British anti-poverty charity puts Britain at the center of a growing global mercenary industry worth around $560 million to companies in the United Kingdom alone. In its report, “Mercenaries Unleashed: The brave new world of private military and security companies,” War On Want names a number of major military and

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Controversy You Can Bank On: British Co-op Bank Closing Pro-Palestine Groups’ Accounts

“Disrupting receipt of these donations will impede our work, even as arms flow unimpeded from Scotland to the Israeli army to commit what Amnesty [International] and others describe as crimes against humanity,” the treasurer of one pro-Palestine NGO tells MintPress.

Billy Briggs
By Billy Briggs
Co-op Bank claims the decision to close the account of a Pro-Palestinian NGO was standard practice for those operating in "high risk" environments, yet they targeted at least 25 other accounts all affiliated with Palestinian NGOs. (Photo: Twiter)

EDINBURGH --- Groups based in the United Kingdom which support human rights causes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have expressed fears that U.S. hedge funds pressured a major bank into closing their accounts. The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which campaigns for Palestinian rights while opposing Israel’s occupation of disputed

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World Bank Peddling Private, For-Profit Schools In Africa, Disguised As Aid

Aid is being used as a tool, a spokesperson for Global Justice Now tells MintPress, to compel the majority of the world to undertake policies which help Western business while undermining public services in emerging nations.

Billy Briggs
By Billy Briggs
Young students in a Bridge International Academy school in Nairobi, in September. (Frederic Courbet/NPR)

Private, for-profit schools in Africa funded by the World Bank and U.S. venture capitalists have been criticized by more than 100 organizations who’ve signed a petition opposing the controversial educational venture. A May statement addressed to Jim Kim, president of the World Bank, expressed deep concern over the global financial institution’s

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Scottish Police Investigating British Role In CIA Kidnapping, Torture

A British human rights nonprofit turns up evidence that CIA planes refueled at Scottish airports, prompting Scottish police to open an investigation into Britain’s role in the U.S. post-9/11 torture program.

Billy Briggs
By Billy Briggs
Romanian military staff stands at the end of a corridor on the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, some 250 kilometers east of Bucharest, in this Nov. 9 2005 file photo. Establishing the exact nature of Romania's involvement in a suspected secret U.S. program is crucial to building the case that Washington sidestepped international human rights conventions by persuading allies to perform dirty work on terror suspects that would have otherwise been illegal in the United States.

A small plane taxis at the airport in Szymany, Poland, Tuesday,  Oct. 19, 2010. Lawyers and rights activists believe that this was the airport used to ferry terrorism suspects in and out of Poland when the CIA ran a secret prison in the eastern European country. Police in Scotland are now investigating CIA rendition programs in their own

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Concerns Mounting Over Secretive Trans-Atlantic Trade Deal TTIP

“It’s not just a trade deal. It’s an unprecedented transfer of power away from democratically-elected governments toward transnational corporations,” an organizer with Global Justice Now Scotland tells MintPress News.

Billy Briggs
By Billy Briggs
President of France Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Obama, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) meeting at the G20 the G-20 leaders summit in Brisbane, Australia

President of France Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Obama, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) meeting at the G20  the G-20 leaders summit in Brisbane, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 16, 2014.  GLASGOW --- Concerns are mounting in

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