Jonathan Moyle

Jonathan Moyle   (pilot, journalist)
Died	March, 1990 Santiago, Chile
Victim of	murder

Jonathan Moyle, was the 28-year-old editor of the magazine 'Defence Helicopter World', when he was found dead in room 1406 of Santiago's Carrera Hotel in March, 1990. His purpose in Santiago was to attend a Chilean sponsored defence conference. The UK inquest into the death of Mr Moyle, whose family are from East Devon, opened in Exeter in November, 1990. It was adjourned by coroner Richard Van Oppen after a pathologist said his inquiries could not be completed because vital organs had already been removed. In 1998 the reconvened inquest found that he had been unlawfully killed.

Family insist that Johnathan Moyle was murdered

The dead man's father, retired teacher Tony Moyle, has said there is "no question" but that his son was killed because he was about to expose an arms deal between Iraq and a Chilean arms dealer. Mr Moyle, who claimed his son was injected with a fatal dose of poison after first being sedated with drugged coffee, has spent £10,000 in a bid to bring the killers to justice.

The Chilean authorities at first dismissed the death of the former RAF helicopter pilot as suicide. But in December 1991, following pressure from the Moyle family, a Chilean judicial investigation concluded he had been murdered. In 1993, after an identity parade in Chile failed to identify a suspect, the murder hunt was halted. Gerard James has claimed that Stephan Kock was involved in his assassination.

Too close to the truth

The family's claim of a cover-up has been backed up by a book "The Valkyrie Operation" on Mr Moyle's death written by Wensley Clark . The author alleges that Mr Moyle was killed by local hitmen. He further alleges that the hitmen were hired to protect a Chilean arms dealer's £300m plan to sell helicopter "gunship kits" to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein just before the Gulf War. The arms dealer, Carlos Cardoen, denies he had anything to do with Mr Moyle's death and has produced his own website proclaiming his innocence.

The investigation into Jonathan Moyle's death was reopened by the Santiago Court of Appeal in late 1997 following representations from a lawyer representing the family.

Insights from Robin Ramsay

The Editor of Lobster Magazine provided additional insight and context to the affair in a speech to the Centre for Security Analysis in London on 8 November 2000 and published in the summer 2001 edition of Lobster - issue 41. Explaining how the SIS's are "so awful to work for", he continued:

Take Johnathan Moyle, a not very bright, gung-ho Queen and country man. Young Moyle, while at University at Aberystwyth, was a Special Branch snitch who thought it his patriotic duty to tell the local SB who was smoking dope. On graduating he became an agent for - well, MI6 probably, though who knows? Moyle ended up being murdered in Chile. According to the book about him, Moyle wasn't very subtle as an intelligence asset and was poking around the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen - one of Mark Thatcher's friends - while Cardoen was doing a big helicopter deal with the Iraqis. This was in the run-up to the American attack on Iraq. Moyle ended up dead in a wardrobe in Chile and what does the local FCO guy do? Tells the media that Moyle was the victim of an auto-erotic accident: strangled himself while having a wank.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Asil Nadir: another victim of the arms-to-Iraq conspiracy?	article	December 2013	Andrew Rosthorn	Commentary on evidence suggesting that Asil Nadir is the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice in furtherance of the continued high-level cover-up of the 'Arms-to-Iraq' scandal through the 1980's

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