2008 Emmy Award-winning Dispatches story of an estimated 15,000 children in Africa's Niger Delta being denounced by Christian pastors as witches and wizards and then killed, tortured or abandoned by their own families. Two-and-a-half-year-old Ellin is one such child. Found at the side of the road, her body having been severely burnt with boiling water. Nwanakwo, eight years old, had acid poured ov
When world-famous investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, one of President Putin's fiercest and most effective critics, was assassinated last October in Moscow, there was international outrage.At home, her colleagues at her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, were determined that an investigation into her murder was not going to run into the sand, like so many before. So they set up their own priva
Peter Oborne, political editor of the Spectator, reports on the West's exit strategy for Iraq. He believes the invasion of Iraq is proving to be the greatest foreign policy failure since Munich. Oborne argues that the plan to transform Iraq into a unified liberal democracy, a beacon of hope in the Middle East, is pure fantasy. Reporting on location with US troops in Sadr City, and through intervie
As the credit crunch continues to leave Britain cash-strapped and high street banks report huge losses, Dispatches investigates who is responsible for the current crisis. Reckless lending and risky investments have been blamed for directly driving up mortgage rates and increasing the numbers of people losing their homes.Dispatches investigates how the bank chiefs allowed this to happen and if
Sean Langan witnesses the bloody battle to retake the strategically critical town of Garmser in Helmand province. Overstretched and outnumbered, are the British troops fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan?
The military conflict in Chechnya has now been dragging on for more than ten years. During this war Moscow has tried every means possible to prevent it being reported in the press. And so all contacts with members of Chechen resistance are considered illegal. According to the latest report to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, in 2004 1,700 disappeared in the republic without trace,
What is the real reason behind Britain’s housing shortage. Is it really because of a true shortage of new houses or is there another reason. Well, like most things today, it’s really caused by powerful corporate groups lobbying the government to get their way and make sure their money making schemes go through – without any though of those who can’t find / afford anywhere to live.
The school siege at Beslan was the bloodiest act of terrorism ever to take place on Russian soil. Yet beyond this horrible truth remain many unanswered questions. There is no agreement on who the terrorists were. How many they numbered? Where they came from? How they got to Beslan? What they wanted? Whether they were all killed or captured? And just how the siege which began on September 1 2004, e
An anonymous woman, covered from head to toe in a blue burka, is dragged across a football pitch and shot in front of 30,000 spectators. This haunting image of Taliban justice was filmed secretly in Channel 4’s award-winning documentary Beneath the Veil broadcast in June 2001. The woman was Zarmina, 35-year-old mother of seven. In a new Dispatches film, Lifting the Veil, Carla Garapedian went to A