MOSCOW, October 22 (RIA Novosti) - A prominent German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte, has revealed that Iraqis, guided by the United States, used German mustard gas against Iranian soldiers in 1988.
“I have witnessed how with German mustard gas and under US supervision the Iraqis have gassed Iranian soldiers,” Ulfkotte said in an e-mail sent to several media outlets, providing the photos he took at the town of Zubaidat in Iran after July 12, 1988. Ulfkotte was sent to the area to photograph what Iraqis did to their adversaries there, the journalist told RT television channel.
In an article titled “Iraqis' Use of Poison Gas Stirs Fears of Proliferation” published in late August, 1988, the Los Angeles Times, citing unnamed military sources, reported that “the Iraqis used chemical weapons liberally in four major attacks … against the Iranians--at Al Faw, Shalamcheh, the Majnoon Islands and Zubaidat.” Moreover, the “sources indicated that the Iraqis have used poison gas far more often, and more efficiently, than the Iranians,” the newspaper added.
In an interview with RT, Ulfkotte stressed that he was shocked to discover that the incident received almost no coverage in German press at the time. The journalist added that the media was supposed to say how brutal, inhuman and terrible it was to kill people with German mustard gas decades after the end of World War II.
The mustard gas was brought to Iraq from Germany labeled as “pesticides,” Ulfkotte explained in the e-mail. “The US gave the satellite photos of the Iranian positions and supervised the action and the Iraqis did it – and I photographed it and was not allowed to publish it,” the journalist said.
In an interview with RT, Ulfkotte also revealed that he worked for the CIA as an “non-official cover,” meaning that the intelligence agency forced him to lie and publish articles he never wrote under his name. He also admitted that the Americans bribed him not to report the truth.
“I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years. And I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public,” Ulfkotte told the television channel. He added that he was educated to write pro-European and pro-American, but not pro-Russian pieces, which runs counter to the principles of democracy and press freedom.
Ulfkotte recently published “Bought Journalism,” a book about lying Western journalists. He said he was forced to reveal the truth after “seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia, this is a point of no return.”
Watch Udo Ulfkotte’s interview to learn the full story:
