The disturbing childhood and tragic death of a Scottish SAS hero

The squalor and deprivation was almost too outlandish for even a master novelist’s imagination.

But Palmer lived it – and survived. It was the army that saved him. Indeed, he went on to become perhaps the key member of the SAS team which broke the Iranian Embassy siege live on television in May 1980.

Palmer’s story is told fully for the first time in the latest page-turner from the acclaimed historian Ben Macintyre. The Siege, which is just out, recounts the hostage drama in forensic detail.

Historian Ben Macintyre

I caught up with Macintyre the day after he’d held a reunion with the surviving members of the SAS rescue team. “It was the first time they’d all gathered together for about 40 years,” Macintyre says. “It was quite the event.”

One soldier was missing, however: Tommy Palmer. As you’ll discover, after saving the lives of all but two of the hostages – and killing the first of the terrorists to die during the siege – fate paved a cruel path for Palmer.

First, let’s remind ourselves of what happened in spring 1980: a gang of six heavily-armed Arab-Iranians stormed Tehran’s Embassy in London, taking 26 people hostage.

Much confusion still surrounds what caused the siege. The year before, the Iranian Revolution saw the Shah deposed and replaced with a government of Islamic extremists led by Ayatollah Khomeini. “Ask people in the street what the siege was about and most will say, wasn’t it Islamic fundamentalism? Wasn’t it about the revolution?” The notion lingers that it was Islamic extremists who took over the embassy.

Wrong. “This was a secular political operation by angry young Arab-Iranians,” Macintyre explains. “Like many in Iran’s Arab minority, they expected the revolution to bring greater political freedoms. Instead, the Ayatollah’s security services clamped down on the Arabs with unbelievable ferocity, creating a militant guerrilla movement of which these six were part.”

It was the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who was behind the operation. Iran and Iraq were at daggers drawn. Iraq bankrolled the terrorists. “Saddam used them to destabilise Iran.”

The Iran-Iraq War would break out within months of the siege. “In a way, the siege was the first battle of the war,” Macintyre says. “It’s just taking place on the streets of Kensington.”

Saddam’s intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, “were training young Arab-Iranian militants outside Baghdad. They were used to attack Iranian pipelines. A whole set of guerrilla operations was going on inside Iran. The attack on the embassy was just an extension of that”.

Macintyre adds: “Saddam wanted a terrorist spectacular in Europe, and Britain was chosen as it looked a soft target. These young Iranians expected the British would give them a fair hearing. They rightly believed Britain was anti-Ayatollah, and therefore this was a great place to attack his diplomats.”

Simultaneously, in Tehran, the Islamic regime was holding 53 diplomats and citizens hostage in the US Embassy. The terrorists in London thought the Iranian hostage crisis – which began in November 1979 – would garner them some sympathy from Britain, America’s closest ally. Tehran, in turn, claimed the London siege was backed by the CIA in revenge. It was a complex geopolitical brew.

However, the Iranian regime “didn’t give a damn” about the hostages in London, says Macintyre. “They were saying ‘they’ll enjoy martyrdom, they wish to die for Islam’.”

The Iranian Embassy seige

Mastermind

Macintyre’s greatest revelation in his new book is that the infamous terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal was the brains behind the London siege. The Palestinian militant is thought to have orchestrated attacks which killed more than 300 people.

Nidal was eventually shot dead in Bagdad in 2002, seemingly on Saddam’s orders. It wouldn’t have been smart for Saddam to keep bloodthirsty terrorists in his capital as Britain and America looked for any excuse to invade.

At the time of the siege, Nidal “was well on his way to being the world’s most wanted terrorist. He was psychotic”. Macintyre is the first to reveal the Nidal link. He uncovered the connection from the unpublished writings of one of the hostages, Syrian journalist Mustapha Karkouti.

Karkouti, who was pro-Palestinian, “shared similar political views” with the hostage-takers, and befriended the “lead gunman” during the siege. The terrorist told Karkouti: “The mastermind was Nidal.”

Nidal once even claimed responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. The claim, however, was false. “He wasn’t only a mass serial killer, but a tremendous liar. Any spectacular that happened, he wanted his fingerprints on it as that was his calling card as the world’s most notorious terrorist,” Macintyre says.

As we’ll see, Nidal’s plot would change the course of history. But first it electrified Britain, as the public watched the SAS storm the embassy live on TV. The raid began as millions of Brits settled in for the World Snooker final, which the BBC interrupted – much to the dismay of many fans – to air the showdown.

At the time, the SAS was barely known. Despite the regiment’s exploits in the Second World War, the average person “had never heard of them,” McIntyre says. That was about to change as the BBC cut from Alex Higgins battling Cliff Thorburn on the green baize to the sight of masked, black-clad SAS troopers bursting their way into the embassy.

The siege began as a police operation, but once terrorists started killing, Thatcher ordered in the SAS. The first hostage to die, Abbas Lavasani, was the Iranian press attache and a member of the regime’s Revolutionary Guard. He was a “fanatical devotee of the Ayatollah”.

An argument broke out between Lavasani and “the most radical of the gunmen”, Jassim Alwan al-Nasiri.

They began to fight physically. “Lavasani tears his shirt open and says ‘if you want a martyr, let it be me’, and Jassim says ‘okay’. They eventually take him downstairs, tie him to the bannisters and Jassim shoots him in the back of the head three times.”

The shots are heard outside, but MI5 has also “by this point penetrated the entire building with eavesdropping devices”. Later in the afternoon, Lavasani’s body is “thrown out the front door”.

As handling of the siege passed from Scotland Yard to the SAS, Lance-Corporal Tommy Palmer and his SAS team enter the story. The regiment had built a replica embassy in just 24 hours, and trained in it tirelessly.

On their downtime, the SAS “horsed around”. There are pictures of them where “they’re pointing guns at each other”. As the clock ticked down, the SAS secreted themselves in the building next door to the embassy, awaiting orders to attack.

Macintyre's fascinating new book

Childhood

THE rarefied streets of Kensington are far removed from the “terrible Edinburgh tenement slum” where Palmer was born in 1951. “He had an appalling childhood,” Macintyre says. “He’d been abandoned by his alcoholic mother. His father was a Canadian GI who he never met. His mother had five children by five different fathers.

“He ran away from home aged seven. He was brought up by an older sister, and lived on the streets for a while.”

Palmer even resorted to drinking from bottles of milk he stole from doorsteps as a little boy. He ended up in care “in a really tough children’s home near Falkirk run by monks”.

By his teens, “Tommy was going off the rails really fast. He was involved in streets fights and thieving”. At 15, while working in a brick factory, he tried to cut his own finger off for compensation. Fortunately, he kept the finger otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to join the Royal Engineers – and that’s what changed, maybe saved, his life. “If he hadn’t joined up, he’d have ended up dead or in prison.” He passed the gruelling special forces selection aged just 21, “one of the youngest people to get into the SAS”. The regiment became “the family he never had. He found purpose and solidity, but there was still something quite fragile about Tommy”. Palmer would tell those closest to him: “I’m never going to grow old.”

Macintyre says: “I think he knew there was an impermanence to his life. In part, his bravery came from feeling that his own life had been rather cheap when he was growing up, that he hadn’t been valued as a child and therefore he was expendable in some way.”

Palmer, though, had “distinguished himself as an extraordinarily effective soldier”, seeing action in places like Borneo, the Middle East and Northern Ireland. “He was really tough, a survivor.”

His mates in the SAS knew him as “the Poacher”. Wherever he went, he’d find food for the pot – he once killed a cow in the Falklands to make steaks for his pals. He married his wife Caroline not long after joining the elite unit.

There was a dark side to Palmer, however. He once threw a grenade into a Brunei river while other squad members were crossing. The Poacher told them he was “just doing a spot of fishing”. He met his wife while on a date with another woman, but “preferred Caroline, and poured a drink over his date so she had to go home”.

Palmer was close mates with his SAS comrade Mel Parry. The pair were “practical jokers” – but often the pranks were more sadistic that amusing. Snakes went into hammocks, laxative in tea, mosquito nets were bayoneted. Parry once tested body armour by having Palmer shoot him at point-blank range.

One victim of their pranks was a young army clerk, assigned to the SAS prior to the raid. He had no role in the military side of the operation, and had never seen action, but Parry and Palmer decided to tell him he was being deployed into the embassy to fight the terrorists inside.

“They called him ‘Wingnut’ as he’d sticking-out ears. They said, ‘Wingnut, you’re going into action, here’s your gun, here’s your gas mask, stand by in 10 minutes’. The poor boy didn’t know one end of a gun from the other. He was absolutely terrified – he sat there for hours thinking he was going to die.” To his credit, the clerk didn’t refuse the order, and was eventually told his leg was being pulled.

As Macintyre notes, pranks can veer into bullying and there was often a “pack mentality” in the SAS. “Would you want to meet Tommy at the end of a boozy night? Definitely not. Would you want him next to you in a foxhole? Yes, you really would. Would you want him next to you on an abseil rope coming down the Iranian Embassy? Definitely.”

The raid

AND that’s where we find Palmer next – on the roof of the embassy ready to rappel down the building. Before the action starts, he spots an old lady watching his team from the window of her flat, and tells one of his comrades: “Little did she know that in about two minutes’ time the whole place was going to explode in f****** fire.”

Once the raid begins, Palmer and his team commander, Sergeant Tom Morrell, abseil down the rear of the building. Morrell had saved Palmer’s bacon years before, when he was almost kicked out of an SAS squadron for bad behaviour. Morrell had said ‘I’ll have the Scotsman’, and the pair had a strong sense of respect for each other.

As he came down the side of the embassy, Palmer’s foot went through a window, spooking the terrorists inside. But worse was to come. Palmer landed on the balcony, looked up and saw Morrell caught on the abseil rope. It was snarled and he couldn’t get loose.

Palmer had been taught not to stop when on a mission so “he immediately kicks in the window and throws in his thunderflashes,” Macintyre says. But something else had gone wrong. The SAS had been told that the hostages were in the room Palmer was about to enter. But they weren’t. The intelligence was faulty and the hostages had been moved.

Palmer entered the room, and then tried to exit into the rest of the embassy building, but the door was barricaded. He unleashed a blast of machine-gun fire at the lock but the door still wouldn’t give.

Palmer came back out through the window, as the room went up in flames. The terrorists had soaked the place in paraffin and his thunderflashes had caused a spark.

As Morrell dangled in mid-air, flames began pouring from the window. Morrell caught fire, and a soldier above cut his rope so he fell to the balcony, suffering third degree burns. Flames then set light to Palmer’s own respirator hood, and the rubber melted into his neck. “So he tears it off. His becomes the only face the terrorists will ever see,” Macintyre explains.

The entire mission was in jeopardy now. Terrorists were firing from positions in the embassy onto the SAS men trying to enter the building. A plan to give one of the lead terrorists “a close haircut” by blowing the roof and bringing down tonnes of concrete, steel and glass on him had also gone wrong. The terrorist wasn’t in the position the SAS thought he would be in when the charge was detonated.

Palmer shimmied across a ledge to another window in the hope that he could access a room which would allow the team to get inside the embassy before it’s too late.

As he makes it to another window, Palmer sees a terrorist inside: Shaye Hamid al-Sahar. Shaye had narrowly dodged being killed by a police sniper as he fired on the SAS men on the balcony.

Palmer smashed the window with his gun and tossed in stun grenades, fired a burst of bullets and entered the room. Shaye fled the room and as the place filled with CS gas Palmer gave chase, even though he’d no respirator now and was choking.

Shaye turned and fired but missed. Palmer pulled the trigger on his machine gun but all he heard was the blood-chilling sound of an empty magazine – it’s called the “dead man’s click”. He’d fired all his rounds into the locked door of the first room.

The SAS go in

First kill

PALMER chased Shaye through the building to the room where the male hostages were held. Seconds before Palmer began pursuing Shaye, this room had been the site of an attempted mass murder. As the room filled with smoke from CS gas canisters fired in from outside, and explosions started rocking the building, the terrorists guarding the hostages opened fire on their prisoners. Incredibly only one died, but many were injured, some seriously.

As Shaye got to the room, Palmer pulled out his pistol and shot him in the head. Shaye is the first terrorist killed. One of the other terrorists in the room is initially mistaken for a hostage; a third is shot on the ground as he appears to reach for a weapon.

Palmer then gives first aid to the wounded and carries the most severely injured to safety. The terrorist mistaken for a hostage is later seen with what’s thought to be a grenade and shot by multiple SAS men. He’s left with 39 bullet wounds.

Eventually, all but one of the terrorists would die. Claims were made that the last surviving terrorist was going to be executed by the SAS. Whatever the case, the man would live. He was taken into custody, tried and served life. Freed after 27 years, he now lives in Britain as he cannot return to Iran where he’d be executed.

The operation lasted just 11 minutes. Afterwards “Tommy was gassed to the eyeballs. He can barely move.”

After some quick medical attention, though, Palmer was back on his feet.

Later that night, when the blood and smoke cleared, the SAS held a victory celebration in Regent’s Park Barracks, still in combat gear and reeking of tear gas. Only one hostage died during the assault. Apart from burns to Morrell and Palmer, there was only one other SAS injury – a trooper who accidentally shot off his finger.

Margaret Thatcher and her husband Denis arrived at the SAS party. Denis was heard to shout “you let one of the bastards live”. Thatcher posed for photographs with masked SAS soldiers cradling their machine guns.

Amid the party, the TV was turned on for the late news showing the now-famous images of the SAS rappelling down the side of the embassy. Just at that moment, Thatcher’s bouffant hair-do obscured the screen. One of the SAS team shouted ‘Oi, f****** sit down at the front’. Thatcher “obediently ducked out of the way”. As Macintyre says: “No-one ever spoke to Mrs Thatcher that way. But who dares, wins.”

After the siege, Palmer took a week off to recover and later received the Queen’s Gallantry Medal – one of four SAS men decorated. Before the siege, Palmer had been on active service in Northern Ireland. During the embassy siege, the SAS lost an officer back in Northern Ireland in a battle with the IRA’s infamous M60 Gang.

The loss had a “galvanising effect” on the raid team. Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before Palmer would return to Belfast’s streets.

The siege aftermath

Death

IN 1983, however, Palmer crashed his car in Northern Ireland and was thrown through the windscreen. He died aged 31. The boot was full of guns. There’s speculation he was on an undercover mission.

Just last year, the street near the children’s home where he grew up in Falkirk was named Palmer Row. It’s his only memorial. Palmer’s death so soon after the siege was a “shattering moment” for the SAS. “It just seemed so pointless, such an unnecessary way to die for someone who’d cheated death so many times. The bravest people sometimes die in the most mundane circumstances. Maybe there’s a kind of poetry in that, in a grim way?”

The siege changed the SAS forever, Macintyre says. After the raid, civilians were trying to enlist in their hundreds. “The SAS has struggled ever since with that tension between their celebrity and the need to maintain secrecy.” Today, ex-SAS men appear on TV survival shows – something many of their comrades “utterly repudiate”, Macintyre adds. “But culturally those programmes are the direct descendants of the siege.”

As the events of the day show, the raid could so easily have turned into a disaster, like the operation to take out the Black September gang which attacked Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. There was never going to be any negotiating with the terrorists. Thatcher had made that “absolutely clear”. She was determined they would be tried as criminals under British law.

Macintyre says that all the players in the siege were far more complicated than the public imagines. “It’s often treated as a black-and-white story of good and evil, wicked terrorists and brave SAS. But the gunmen aren’t simply cardboard villains and the SAS aren’t straightforward have-a-go heroes.”

Palmer’s role, though, “was remarkable”. If he hadn’t got through that second window and into the body of the embassy who knows what might have happened to the hostages? Thatcher had been warned that up to 40% of the hostages could die during the operation.

“What Tommy did was extraordinary. His role was absolutely critical,” Macintyre adds. “If he hadn’t gone in, the whole operation would’ve been delayed. If he hadn’t taken the initiative and climbed in through that window, it would’ve been a completely different story. The full extent of his contribution has never been explored before.”

On accusations that the SAS executed some of the gunmen, Macintyre says: “The coroner wasn’t having any of that, and having read all the reports I’m not having any of that either. They were under orders to go in and liberate the hostages. They weren’t under orders to kill the gunmen, but if the gunmen resisted in any way they were to neutralise them.”

When it comes to Palmer killing Shaye, Macintyre says: “He’d already been shot at twice by Shaye, who was still armed. He was completely within his rights to do what he did.”

To Macintyre, there’s a sadness to that little street in Falkirk named after Palmer. “I wonder if people in Palmer Row know about Tommy and what this young man did. It’s very poignant. He was extraordinarily brave.

“What he did at the embassy was incredible. But he was a very damaged person, very complicated. He wasn’t a straightforward hero – there’s no such thing in life.”

Legacy

MACINTYRE met Palmer’s widow Caroline and his children, who were still in primary school during the siege. “I feel really privileged they spoke to me,” he says. “They’re delighted Tommy is being recognised.”

Although Caroline lived life similar to any SAS trooper’s wife, Palmer was different. He wouldn’t simply disappear when called to missions like other soldiers, he’d always ring her and explain. “He was a very loving husband in many ways.” One of Caroline’s most vivid memories is Palmer returning from the raid “still smelling of tear gas and having to put him in the shower”.

Macintyre laughs at the notion that Palmer might not have taken kindly to him, given his rather private school English accent. Palmer wasn’t fond of what are called “Ruperts” in the SAS

– upper-class officers. “He might have heard my voice and taken a swing at me,” Macintyre jokes. “But he wasn’t chippy either. He was a very interesting man.

“He was the classic SAS soldier. He could take orders, he could give orders. He was intelligent, fit, agile, able to think on his feet, and all those elements came through in what he did in the embassy as the circumstances that they were expecting changed completely.

“Tommy’s first role in the siege was offensive, then his second role is to save the lives of the injured.” One badly wounded hostage would certainly have died without Palmer getting him from the building.

Palmer – along with all the other SAS men – gave a full report to police after the raid and left a hand-written account. “For someone who wasn’t an educated man, his account is so precise, lucid and exact. It’s thoroughly credible. It contains no emotion, certainly not regret or contrition or any suggestion things could have been done another way. He felt they’d done exactly what they were supposed to do.”

The ripple effects of the siege are still felt to this day. The events of 1980 changed British and world history. If the raid had failed, or there had been mass casualties, the Thatcher government could have fallen.

The success of the raid “became a leitmotif for her government. It was a massive PR victory”. Arguably, it put Thatcher on the path to fight the Falklands War, and launch her uncompromising policy towards the IRA.

Within months, the Iran-Iraq War broke out killing one million. There’s a direct line, Macintyre believes, between the siege, the Iran-Iraq conflict, the first Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraq War – events, which in turn, led to the Syrian conflict and the rise of Islamic State. “These things are sequential,” he says.

Most of all, though, the Iranian Embassy siege is a story, Macintyre explains, “of how people with rival ideologies are prepared to destroy each other. Inside the embassy, you have two different groups, both equally fanatical, both determined they’re right”.

He adds: “These men did what they did as they’d been brutalised by murder. If you want to make a man a killer, kill the thing he loves. That’s true of the six gunmen and the Iranian regime. And it’s true today when we look at what’s happening around the world. This story can’t be forgotten, as it’s still our story.”