Declassified UK

In August 2020, Declassified published a story about a British soldier, Ahmed Al-Batati, being investigated by the Royal Military Police for protesting UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia. British missiles, fighter jets and bombs have been used in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen since 2015.[9]

In November 2020, Declassified revealed that the United Kingdom had nearly 150 overseas military bases, hundreds more than the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had previously claimed.[10]

In February 2021, it revealed that figures from the British royal family had had more than 200 meetings with leaders of "tyrannical" Middle Eastern monarchies since the start of the Arab Spring in February 2011. These included 44 meetings with the Bahraini House of Khalifa and 40 with the Saudi regime.[11]

On 8 September 2021, in the wake of the final withdrawal of the United States troops from Afghanistan, Phil Miller reported that "a Cold War-era file on Margaret Thatcher's support for the Afghan mujahideen" was being censored by the UK government. This was despite the fact that the documents has become eligible for release to the National Archives under the 30-year rule.[12]

On 3 January 2022, Richard Norton-Taylor reported that "British warships deployed to the South Atlantic after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982" were armed with 31 nuclear depth charges.[13] The story was later picked up by Argentine newspaper Clarín and British tabloid, the Daily Express.[14][15]

In August 2020, Declassified journalist Phil Miller, who wrote the piece about Ahmed Al-Batati, asked the MoD for comment. An MoD press officer responded by questioning what angle Miller's article was taking and claimed not to know much about Declassified; the officer later told Miller, "we no longer deal with your publication".[16] Following this, the Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights organisation, issued an alert warning of a serious breach of press freedom.[17][18] In addition, the International Press Institute wrote a letter to the MoD and the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, asking them to clarify the reason for the blacklisting.[19]

After the MoD issued an apology,[20] Declassified editor Mark Curtis told Press Gazette: "We are looking at taking legal action against the MoD because we think they have certainly acted against the Civil Service Code, for example, and there may be other codes of conduct or other legal requirements that they might not be consistent with by telling us that."[16] The National Union of Journalists called upon Wallace to intervene[21] and an independent review was later ordered.[2] The inquiry was headed by Tom Kelly, who was one of Tony Blair's Downing Street press spokespeople when Blair was Prime Minister. It found that MoD press officers believed their communications director had "sanctioned a blanket ban" on giving any comment to the website.[22] Curtis said, "It is clear that Declassified was blacklisted, which is contrary to the way that public officials are required to deal with news organisations. The MoD should admit it and stop trying to let its most senior media official off the hook. The MoD is used to dealing mainly with compliant journalists who are happy to follow the official line. Declassified is different, and seeks instead to perform a public service by revealing what governments do."[22]