In a spy flight documentary released Thursday by Declassified UK, the father of a former Royal Marine killed in Gaza says footage captured by an opaque U.K. surveillance program could clarify what happened to his son.
Neil Henderson’s son was killed by Israel in Gaza. (Alex Morris/Declassified UK)
By Alex Morris and Phil Miller
Declassified UK
The family of a British aid worker killed by Israel have made a fresh demand for the U.K. military to release its surveillance footage of Gaza from the day he died.
James “Jim” Henderson, a former Royal Marine commando, was killed in a drone strike on a humanitarian aid convoy in April 2024.
His father Neil told Declassified he felt “quite angry” that footage from a Royal Air Force plane that loitered over Gaza earlier that day had not been shown to the family.
“The reason for not supplying that footage from the Ministry of Defence is a bit of an insult,” he said.
“I can’t understand how an RAF plane flying over Gaza on the pretext of looking for hostages, how that footage can affect British security.”
Neil Henderson’s comments are contained in a new documentary by Declassified released on Thursday titled Britain’s Gaza Spy Flight Scandal.
The documentary features the first footage of an outsourced spy plane taking off from an RAF base on Cyprus bound for Gaza this September, after a U.N. commission had declared there was a genocide taking place.
Labour and Conservative governments sent hundreds of flights over the besieged coastal strip between December 2023 and October 2025 officially looking for hostages held by Hamas.
The RAF has not confirmed if it found any hostages, and instead its trove of footage could have captured evidence of war crimes or even been used by Israel to facilitate them.
RAF Veteran Speaks Out
Steve Masters, who served in the RAF for 19 years as a technician, told Declassified:
“My message to the government is release the footage. The continuing blockage of that footage to the public does nothing to quell the suspicion that we are materially aiding a genocide. So I think there is a need for them to be held accountable and if that means going to The Hague so be it.”
Asked whether intelligence shared with Israel could have been used to target civilians, Masters said: “I don’t think that that’s a stretch of anybody’s imagination.”
He explained:
“They’ve admitted themselves that they’re sharing intelligence from these flights in real time. Now, that could well be connected to hostages, but it could also be for ground operations in general, [and] also quite easily be used for general target acquisition.”
The U.K. government has claimed it carefully controls what intelligence it shared with Israel from the flights.
However, Masters said: “If it’s been streamed in real time to an intelligence and operation room, you have no idea how they’re utilizing and using that intelligence moving forward.”
Declassified found brochures from the American company Sierra Nevada, whose planes have been used by the RAF for some of the surveillance flights.
These say that their planes have “airborne satellite communications to maintain real-time digital communications with mission partners and disseminate perishable intelligence.”
Neil Henderson said:
“The equipment they’ve got – spy plane stuff – it’s high tech, and that would give us a far better understanding of what was happening on the ground. Which I think would, by releasing that footage, prove to me that the Israelis were watching them at the time.”
‘Infuriating’
Snowboarding on Mount Olympus in Cyprus with RAF Troodos, a powerful surveillance station, in the background, February 2008. (Edi Weissmann/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Palestinian victims have also not seen footage that the RAF may have taken before major attacks. This Friday marks the first anniversary of a massacre in Nuseirat which killed 34 civilians.
The documentary shows how an outsourced spy plane was based within three streets of where the massacre took place, hours in advance.
Matthew Stavrinides, from the group Genocide Free Cyprus, commented: “How much suffering do the Palestinians have to experience until British officials like [Prime Minister] Keir Starmer, like [Deputy Prime Minister] David Lammy, realise that they are directly complicit?”
Melanie Steliou, a Cypriot activist who lives near the RAF base, said the surveillance flights were “heart wrenching and infuriating.”
Steliou received threatening phone calls from the “Sovereign Base Area” police after filming with Declassified on the 3 percent of Cyprus that remains occupied by Britain after independence in 1960.
Even the island’s highest point, Mount Olympus, was “retained” by Britain and houses RAF Troodos, a powerful surveillance station which can monitor the Middle East.
Steliou called for the U.K. to fully decolonise.
“The British government should just look after its own people, the British citizens, instead of meddling in other people’s affairs. The British empire never fell.”
Alexander Morris is a video journalist and filmmaker based in London. He has made hard-hitting documentaries and video reportage around the world, including conflict zones like Afghanistan, and was previously a video journalist at the Middle East Monitor. His documentary about Rio gang members enforcing Covid restrictions, Favela Lockdown, won “best documentary” and “best news and politics video” at the 2020 Lovie Awards. Other topics of his reporting including the rise of Hindu-extremism in India in 2019, Britain’s racist border policies and the Windrush generation in 2021, and the historic genocide trial against Israel in The Hague in 2024.
Phil Miller is the editor of Declassified UK. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes.
This article is from Declassified UK.
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Perhaps the plane was spotting for the IDF? Nothing is impossible. For every flash point and troubled area if you dig deep enough you will find the UK and MI6 slithering around. We are at the centre of everything nefarious. If they ran our country with the skill they demonstrate for connivance we would be riding high instead of circling the drain.
Another commando turned aid worker .
Seal team 6 anyone .
Aided by your own country probably with technology from all blind support of being patrotic to a fault .
The garden path of worship .
I feel sorry for the loss , the stoic anger is in control, as helpless .
I see a Dad , not the soldier .
Follow lest a good deed be punished ,
Ask the same people who did this to accept your sorrow ?
What was he like as a child ? I bet he wanted to follow to make you proud .
I see in this mans face the choking regret as the old , little time left , have ,to protect the young .
I digress as no matter how its sliced .
Yet I sense a hug from your son , even if closeness seems impossible or only if verbal in the past .
A hug that breaks the bones .
Where and when can the public see these documetaries?? There’s many of us elders not familiar with modern techy jargon and we’re still technophobic to a degree. Keeping up with relevant (but overlooked) current information matters to us. Thanks. Slàinte mhath!! ????????
So Israel gets all the information but the British public who paid for it don’t get to see anything.
Starmer to a T.