SAS or SBS in Mexico???

[ecuellaro]

This is causing a lot of noise in Mexico. 6 British citizens with tourist visas were doing "explorations" in Mexican caves without any permission or knoledge of Mexican authorities, something went wrong and they got trapped and refused to be rescued by Mexican personel or anybody else than British divers. Later it was aknoledge that in the team were 4 "British Navy??" members doing "team work development skills??".

This got a lot of more weird when the Mexican media was not allowed to enter to the place and they only gave an interview to the BBC.

This "misterious" guys doing "strange" activities were freed from the caves and were overprotected by Mexican military personel when came out. They did not give interviews or speak with anybody.

Any chance that they wer SAS or SBS doing some covert training drill?

The link at cnn:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/03/26/trapped.cavers/index.html

[ShadowNeo]

Lol I doubt it is as mysterious as you think :).

Its been on the UK news alot - it was simply a group of experienced Caver Explorers who happened to be members of the forces. The reason it caused a lot of noise in Mexico was because they apparently had to get special permission, and their tourist visas were not valid for some reason. The Mexican government was uneasy as apparently they thought it may have been some "covert millitary operation".

As the guys over there have said, they've been doing it for 20 years without ever having trouble with the Mexican government. Their identities have been made well known on British TV, there isn't much to hide.

The official reason given for the british rescue team was mainly due to them being some of the most experienced in the world, and they had personal experience of how the trapped team members worked, which would ease the rescue somewhat.

[Loco]

The official reason given for the british rescue team was mainly due to them being some of the most experienced in the world, and they had personal experience of how the trapped team members worked, which would ease the rescue somewhat.
Strange, to saying the less. I´d suppose mexicans have enough expert espeleology rescues teams, and they are "there". There were some incidents like this in Spain not far ago, several incidents, and they were strangely when there were talks of high level about Gibraltar. British shouldn´t trust the people´s behaviour towards them to be fair always, only in the case if they behave in a fair way, which isn´t the rule. They are playing dangerously with the confidence of people they call friends. Being "the most experienced in the world" it seems quite subjective here, at least ridicule, and if those "tourist" were enough unexperienced for being trapped, I doubt they have notice about the best rescue team in the world. Bad attitude towards Mexico.

[ShadowNeo]

Bear in mind that firstly the Mexicans were unwilling to do anything until a full explanation was made of the situation, and the british team I believe was also in the country anyway (I think they were in the same expedition group).

The team have apparently been doing this in Mexico for 20 yearsm and this is the first time the Mexican government has kicked up a fuss about it.

[Loco]

I suppose in Mexico are mexican officials who manage rescue activities, don´t you?

[UNDERDOG1]

Back in the late '80s in Italy, very near where I live it happened a very strange fact, two englishman camping in a forest near Desulo (sardinia, Italy) were attacked by two youngster, one armed with a knife and another with a shotgun, they cutted open the tent to suprise the tourists, but they found only one inside. It happened that the other one was outside and managed to disarm the shotgun wielder. The knife one escaped. That was rather strange, but the worst was that the two english tied the young would be robber with a rope and used something to as a blindhood (as for terrorist arrests). The three headed in row for the nearby town (Desulo), and, upon arriving at a bridge very near the town, they told someone to call the police, instead one brother of the shotgun wielder arrived with another shotgun, telling'em to free the brother, the confrontation escalated to the point that one of the two englishman shot the italian to death before carabinieri showed up.

The whole thing was on the local newspapers at the time.

I trained with some carabinieri at the time and they told me that both the english were soldier doing survival training in the rough forest near Desulo, and he suspected they were some kind of special forces, now after many years, I remember that he told me that they was pilots maybe, because they were from "air force service", dunno if it was bad translation, but they were trained in unarmed combat because they bruised the shotgun wielder real bad.

After that, they showed up in court (behind closed doors) and the whole thing was ruled as justifiable shooting on self-defense.

That was in 1984-85.

[ShadowNeo]

Heres an article from BBC News which explains a little of the background to this:




British cavers rescued in Mexico

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39966000/jpg/_39966611_thumbsup_afp_body203.jpg

Briton Charles Milton emerges from the Mexican cave
Six British cavers rescued from caverns in Mexico after being trapped for over a week say they were never in danger.
The cavers were reached by specialist divers from the UK who spent Thursday escorting each man through flood water using scuba diving equipment.

The group were waiting at a camp they had set up for such an emergency and said everything had gone as planned.

The men, who were military staff, will meet Mexican immigration officials on Friday before flying home.

Heavy rains

They spent Thursday night in a military hospital having medical checks, food and rest.

The six men on the expedition were part of a 13-strong group from the Combined Services Caving Association and a row has broken out between the UK and Mexico about their visas.

We're feeling quite cheerful

Toby Hamnett
Rescued caver


Cavers embarrassed by rescue

The trip was due to last 36 hours but the men got stuck after heavy rains raised the water level in the cave.

The cavers declined local offers of rescue, instead preferring to wait for two specialist British divers who flew to Mexico to escort them out.

The British divers, assisted by Mexican underwater specialists, had entered the cave on Thursday.

One stayed with the men to instruct them on how to use the scuba equipment, while the other swam through the water with them one by one.

None had suffered any injuries and had supplies of food and other equipment to keep them comfortable, plus communication equipment to maintain contact with their colleagues outside the cave.


The BBC correspondent at the scene, Claire Marshall, said the men told her they were "looking forward to a good beer".

They were fed hot tortillas en route to a military hospital in Puebla for check-ups, and are expected to travel to Mexico City on Friday.

As they emerged into the humid vegetation and a media scrum, one of them said they were never in danger and would have preferred to wait for the water to subside.

"The thing is, everything went as planned," Jonathan Sims said.

"We thought we might have a problem with the (water) so we put in a plan, we had food in there, communications," he said.

"The unfortunate thing is we got too much media attention."

Playing cards

They had spent part of the time awaiting rescuers by playing games with a deck of cards fashioned from a logbook.

"We're feeling quite cheerful," said rescued caver Toby Hamnett.

Mexican President Vicente Fox on Wednesday asked the UK to explain what the soldiers had been doing in the Cuetzalan caves.

Mexico complained it had not been told the military officers, who entered the country on tourist visas, were there.

The cavers will meet immigration officials in Mexico on Friday to clarify issues about their immigration status, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

Flying home

The six men, along with six others from their expedition, could then fly home from Mexico City, an embassy official said.

The Ministry of Defence has insisted the men were in Mexico as part of a military adventure training expedition and the clearance procedure for it would have been completed.

Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell welcomed the news the cavers had been rescued.

"We are extremely grateful to all the Mexican authorities who played their part," he said. "I hope to speak to my Mexican counterpart, Lourdes Aranda, today to thank her personally."

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39960000/gif/_39960779_mexico_cavers2_416.gif

[UNDERDOG1]

sorry for bad english..trying to type sneakily at work... p-)

[TriggerPuller]

Farmgirl, does that story sound familiar to you?

TP

[Fenna]

Well if we're going into covert ops by the British special forces, don't forget the spies who for some reason decided to stand at the fence of a Greek Airbase and take pics of the planes :D

[ShadowNeo]

Don't know if your being sarcastic there ;)....

But they were aquitted
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2414787.stm

[Fenna]

Yeah was being sarcastic.

Interesting story by UNDERDOG, although I don't understand why British pilots would be training in Italy

[UNDERDOG1]

We must remember that Sardinia is more or less a giant Military base: we have One of the largest military camp in europe (Cape Teulada, where I did served back in 1987), we have a very large USA navy base in La maddalena Gulf, where stationed Nuclear class submarines.

We did have the super-secret training base of Poglina, near Alghero, where operators from G.O.I. (navy commandos), SISDE and SISMI (civil and military secret services) did train. The base was dismantled following the GLADIO scandal (a secret organization of covert agents recruited even between civilians back in the 60's to do counterinsurgency).


Also, we have the air force base of Perdasdefogu and Decimomannu, that are NATO bases where there are germans and english.

I was told that the two pilots were training in survival.

[martinexsquaddie]

sas covert ops in mexico rofl rofl rofl
someone somewhere freaked when they found out the cavers were military and got all macho
now it all looks very silly and the mexicans are running around like headless chickens trying to get out of this one with out looking anymore stupid :roll:

[Gringo]

I heard from somewhere that they were looking for Uranium :roll:

Stupid tabloids, they don't know ****.

It's like what was said in Training Day "The newspaper is 90% bull****, but it entertains me, so if you won't let me read this paper, u entertain me"

I don't remember the exact qoute, but it was something along those lines. The newspaper, it's like a fiction book of short stories.

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

Yeah was being sarcastic.

Interesting story by UNDERDOG, although I don't understand why British pilots would be training in Italy

I would imagine there is NATO training ops in Italy. There was an admission by an ex MI6 agent a few years ago that they did some training in Italy with the full cooperation of the Italian security services.