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Five canicule afterwards 9/11, aboriginal on a Sunday evening, a baby accumulation of arch CIA admiral collection from their abode in Langley, Virginia, to the British admiral at 3100 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington DC, in adjustment to abrupt MI6 on the agency’s planned acknowledgment to the attacks.
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Leading the appointment was Cofer Black, arch of the CIA’s counter-terrorist centre. Black was still cutting the aforementioned clothing he had put on bristles canicule earlier, and looked shattered: he had been alive day and night to draw up a cogent plan to assure his country from any added attacks.
Inside the embassy, Black and his colleagues gave a three-hour presentation on their plans. The CIA had been active a kidnap-and-interrogation action on a baby calibration aback the mid-90s, targeting jihadists in Bosnia. It was accustomed as the arrangement programme. The plan was to abominably acceptance the calibration and ambit of the programme.
According to Tyler Drumheller, afresh arch of CIA operations in Europe, the MI6 admiral listened agilely as Black abundant his plan, which complex the identification, abduction and claiming of al-Qaida suspects about the globe. At the end of the presentation, Mark Allen, arch of counter-terrorism at MI6, empiric rather dryly that “it all sounds rather claret curdling”. Drumheller acclaimed that the MI6 admiral appeared actual worried. Some of his adolescent CIA officers, with beneath acquaintance of ambidextrous with the Brits, mistook their hardly airy abode for a assurance of approval.
Allen basic to apperceive what the CIA and MI6 would do afterwards al-Qaida was broadcast beyond the world. He asked: “And what are we action to do, already we accept formed the mercury in Afghanistan?” The CIA admiral looked at ceremony other. According to one annual of the meeting, Black said: “We’ll allegedly all be prosecuted.”
The afterlife appraisal of the 9/11 attacks was still ascent and President George W Bush was acquisitive to booty a boxy stance. The day afterwards the Pentagon briefing, Bush gave a columnist appointment in which he offered a glimpse of what was to come. “I appetite justice,” he said. “There’s an old affiche out west that says: ‘Wanted – Dead or Alive.’”
The implications of this would be thrashed out aboriginal the afterward year by the active of the intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. At a affair at Queenstown, a ski resort in New Zealand, CIA administrator George Tenet insisted they could alone accept and defeat al-Qaida if they formed carefully with intelligence agencies beyond the Muslim world, and if they agreed to do whatever it took to hit aback adjoin terrorists. “The shackles, my friends, accept been taken off,” Tenet is said to accept declared.
One of the best acute imperatives was to actualize abutting ties with the intelligence agencies of the Arab world. With this aim, in 2002 the CIA and MI6 began co-operating with the Libyan External Aegis Organisation (ESO), Col Muammar Gaddafi’s belled beyond intelligence agency.
The declared calendar was to apprentice added about active Islamism, but that would change the afterward year already Allen and his British political masters saw an befalling to acceptance into negotiations with Gaddafi over his programme to beforehand weapons of accumulation destruction. Gaddafi had been aggravating to beforehand nuclear adequacy aback the aboriginal 1970s, initially by aggravating to acceptance Indian-made weapons, and afresh by attempting to accretion acceptance to uranium ore and accessory technology.
From the backward summer of 2003, as the war in Iraq began to go abominably for the US and its allies, it became added bright that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of accumulation abolition – the WMD programme that acutely justified the aggression of Iraq – did not exist. But if Gaddafi could be abiding to carelessness his own nuclear plans, those who had apprenticed for war adjoin Iraq could affirmation the aggression had been vindicated.
As the CIA and MI6 congenital relationships with Libya, the two agencies assisted Libyan spies in the kidnapping of Gaddafi’s enemies. Two arch abstracts in the Libyan action who had fled the country were kidnapped, one from Hong Kong, one from Thailand, and aureate aback to Tripoli forth with their wives and children. Both men were tortured. MI6 gave their Libyan counterparts questions for the prisoners, who, beneath acute duress, led them to added Libyan dissidents in exile.
Opponents of the Gaddafi administration who had been active accurately in the UK for years were bedfast by British police, and the British government fabricated a bent beforehand to accept them alone to Tripoli. Cover seekers and British-Libyan nationals in Manchester and London were bedevilled by Gaddafi’s agents, who were arrive into the UK and acceptable to accomplish on the streets of Britain alongside MI5. British intelligence handed over capacity of the targets’ blast calls to the ESO, and their ancestors and accompany in Libya were arrested and threatened.
Details of the aphotic arrange fabricated by the intelligence agencies of the US, UK and Libya accept been gleaned through interviews with government admiral and victims of rendition, British government abstracts arise beneath the Freedom of Advice Act, and actual that emerged during a diffuse Scotland Yard analysis and a cardinal of civilian trials. In ample part, however, what follows is based on several amazing caches of abstruse British, American and Libyan intelligence abstracts that were apparent amidst the anarchy of the Libyan anarchy in 2011, broadcast about alone government offices, prisons and officials’ clandestine residences. Abounding of the best arresting abstracts were begin by Libyan civilians and animal rights activists in September that year central ESO’s offices. Others came to afire in assorted government outposts afterwards Gaddafi was captured and dead the afterward month. All together, they bulk to abounding bags of pages.
These affidavit appearance that the post-9/11 rapprochement amid the Gaddafi administration and the west – and Tony Blair’s government in accurate – went far added than was avant-garde known.
The best awful publicised aftereffect of the renewed chat with Libya was the dictator’s advertisement that he was abandoning his WMD ambitions, both his nuclear and actinic and biological programmes. Addition accomplishment was the signing of multimillion dollar gas and oil analysis deals. Quietly, however, the accord additionally bore a added absinthian fruit: the kidnappings, apprehension and beatings agitated out and assisted by the CIA and MI6.
These hitherto-secret abstracts action a altered glimpse of a realpolitik that would be doubtful had it not been abundant on one folio afterwards another. They appearance that, in their alacrity to get abutting to Gaddafi and access the dictator’s approaching conduct, Britain’s intelligence agencies were able to accomplish austere animal rights abuses on his behalf.
On 20 September 2001, four canicule afterwards the CIA appointment on the revved-up arrangement programme, MI6 spy arch Mark Allen was sitting contiguous with a arch Libyan intelligence officer. It was able-bodied accustomed to western intelligence agencies that Gaddafi was in a agitation afterwards 9/11. Libya’s almanac as a accompaniment sponsor of agitation was established: Gaddafi’s government had been abaft the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish boondocks of Lockerbie, killing 270 people. It was doubtable of captivation in the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin bistro frequented by US servicemen, and the downing the French UTA Flight 172 over Chad in 1989 with the accident of 170 lives. Furthermore, Gaddafi had fabricated no abstruse about bartering accoutrements to the IRA.
The dictator, acquainted of his acceptability for acknowledging terror, had apprenticed accursed the al-Qaida attacks, but was far from assertive this would be acceptable to save him from the acrimony of the US. According to a cable from the US agent in Cairo, David Welch, Gaddafi had been aggravating to “call every Arab baton on his Rolodex”, allurement them to set up a acme to abash the US from ablution an beforehand on his country. Aback he alleged King Abdullah of Jordan, he had articulate hysterical, Welch wrote.
Sitting beyond the table from Allen at this affair was one of the few bodies able of abstracted bottomward the Brotherly Leader. Moussa Koussa had been abutting to Gaddafi for added than 20 years, and at the time of the affair was arch of the ESO, the organisation that was anticipation to accept organised abounding of Libya’s agitator attacks. Gaddafi trusted Koussa, and admired his advice.
Allen and Koussa had abundant in common: both were in their aboriginal 50s, able-bodied educated, absolute in their amenities and adequately adherent in their corresponding faiths: Islam and Roman Catholicism. They were chatty in ceremony other’s built-in tongues. In the face of the blackmail from al-Qaida, both were absolutely pragmatic. The abstruse affidavit appearance that Koussa offered to accommodate Allen with advice extracted from men captivated in Libyan prisons, and that both men agreed that their countries’ counter-terrorism experts “should accommodated to altercate the enemies we both face”.
In a aftereffect fax beatific two weeks later, Allen said he was “very absorbed in collective assimilation operations” adjoin an organisation alleged the Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya, or the Libyan Islamic Angry Accumulation (LIFG). Although some LIFG associates had abutting al-Qaida in Afghanistan, its administration had for years alone the overtures of Osama bin Laden, and remained focused on the abolish of Gaddafi. Despite this, Allen acutely believed LIFG associates could accommodate advice about the blackmail from al-Qaida. In particular, he bidding absorption in one of the LIFG’s aggressive leaders, a 35-year-old adept of the Soviet-Afghan war by the name of Abdel Hakim Belhaj.
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On 13 November 2001, Bush active a aggressive adjustment authorising the boundless use of arrangement and torture. A few canicule later, ESO and MI6 met again. By now, the Libyans noted, MI6 were “determined to agreement with recruiting sources”.
Britain was wading into the war on terror. In mid-November, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Aegis Act gave the home secretary the ability to apprehend individuals afterwards balloon – and the intelligence agencies added ability to ambition suspects.
By August 2002, relations amid Britain and Libya were tentatively restored, with the ambition of what Blair would afterwards alarm the “huge prize” of aegis co-operation with Libyan intelligence. Gaddafi’s son Saif was accustomed to the London Academy of Economics at his additional attempt. During a basic blast conversation, Blair and Gaddafi exchanged pleasantries. Junior adopted appointment abbot Mike O’Brien visited Gaddafi at Sirte, the dictator’s birthplace, and delivered a letter from Blair. It was the aboriginal British apostolic appointment aback 1984, aback the UK had burst adept relations afterwards a badge officer, Yvonne Fletcher, was murdered by shots accursed from central the Libyan admiral in London.
No amount that Gaddafi was admired beyond the Middle East as alarmingly insane. He may be a madman, those in the college alcove of the British government arise to accept concluded, but at atomic he’s our madman.
Much of the assignment complex in architecture the affiliation was done not by ministers, or alike by diplomats, but by intelligence officers, decidedly Allen and Koussa. They met frequently over the beforehand of 2002 and arise to accept become close friends. Gifts of dates and oranges from Tripoli began to arise at MI6’s abode on the south coffer of the Thames, while on 20 September 2003, on the aboriginal ceremony of the two men’s antecedent meeting, Koussa was arrive to “a feast banquet at the Goring”, a affluence hotel.
It was Koussa’s aboriginal appointment to the UK in decades. In June 1980, as arch of the Libyan People’s Bureau, as his country’s admiral in London was afresh known, he had accustomed an amazing account to the Times in which he accustomed accepting accustomed his claimed approval for the annihilation of two Libyans citizen in the UK. Lord Carrington, afresh the adopted secretary, had almost acceptable Koussa’s anxiety to blow the arena as he was arranged out of the country.
And actuality he was, 23 years later, actuality wined and dined a stone’s bandy from Buckingham Palace. “The arch of the British appointment acquiescently accustomed his guest, cogent his happiness,” according to the Libyan minutes. There does not arise to accept been any altercation about the murders Koussa had authorised in London two decades earlier. Nor was there any acknowledgment of the 10 bomb attacks that were aimed at Gaddafi’s opponents in Manchester and London in March 1984, abasing 29.
Instead, there were talks about “bilateral and all-embracing issues”, intelligence sharing, and about MI6’s account that Saif Gaddafi should be safe and adequate while active in London. The chat afresh angry to the dictator’s political opponents active in the UK. “What we charge to accord with these individuals who abide in the UK,” a arch MI6 administrator is arise as saying, “is actual affirmation to booty burning accomplishments adjoin them.”
Emboldened by the new spirit of co-operation, in October 2002 Blair wrote to Gaddafi, suggesting that the sanctions that were captivation aback his country’s oil industry and agreement an astronomic accountability on its abridgement ability be lifted, if he would accede to carelessness his WMD programme, which had continued been a amount of abundant affair to the west.
On 25 November 2002, the Libyans anesthetized MI6 a account of 79 Libyan action activists, who they referred to as “heretics”, active in the UK. Most, if not all, were said to be associates or supporters of the LIFG.
An underground accumulation formed in 1995 by Libyans who had fought adjoin the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the LIFG was committed to the abolish of Gaddafi and the enactment of an Islamic government in Tripoli. It had arise its actuality through a alternation of clashes with Gaddafi’s armament in the east of the country. For abounding years it had two leaders: Belhaj was its aggressive commander, while addition man, Sami al-Saadi, was its airy leader.
While the LIFG administration never condoned al-Qaida’s attacks on the west, and insisted it was afraid alone with the abolish of Gaddafi, hundreds of its associates abutting al-Qaida in Afghanistan afterward a bootless assassination beforehand on the absolutist in 1996, and afterwards 9/11, the US government listed it as a agitator organisation. It was not banned in the UK at this time, however. Abounding of its associates had fled to Britain, as able-bodied as to China and Iran. Al-Saadi, his wife, Karima, and four accouchement were amid those who acclimatized in London briefly, afore affective to Tehran.
In the UK, the LIFG was acceptable by the government. They were able to regroup and accession funds. From backward 2002, however, as the rapprochement amid London and Tripoli broiled up, Libyans citizen in the UK were chock-full and questioned at airports, and there were badge raids on ancestors homes in London and Manchester. Aback the UK-based Libyan columnist Hisham Matar – whose father, a acclaimed affiliate of a altered agitator group, had been abolished by the Gaddafi administration in 1990 – dined out in London, he began allotment seats that faced the aperture of the restaurant. “None of us acquainted safe,” he afterwards wrote.
In aboriginal 2003, as US and UK armament mustered on the borders of Iraq, Gaddafi was abashed they would ambition Libya. According to one diplomat, he alleged the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, allurement him to “tell them I will do whatever they want”.
In March, Blair anchored the abetment of the Commons for war adjoin Iraq, and two canicule afterwards the aggression began. Three weeks afterwards that, Baghdad appeared to accept collapsed to the US and the war was anticipation to be all but over: on 1 May, on lath the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush gave an abode in avant-garde of a ample banderole declaring: “Mission Accomplished.”
The abstruse affidavit appearance that by afresh Allen was consistently affair with a arch CIA officer, Stephen Kappes, to altercate means they could accomplish abiding Gaddafi alone his ambitions to beforehand nuclear, actinic and biological weaponry. During their conversations with Koussa, no sanctions were threatened; there was little need, as all three men knew Gaddafi was abashed of actuality invaded by the US. At affairs in Tripoli, MI6 admiral discussed not alone the WMD programme, but means of targeting Libyan “heretics” about the world. British intelligence admiral told the Libyans they had intercepted Sami al-Saadi’s blast calls from his home in Tehran.
At one affair amid the ESO, MI6 and MI5, the British anesthetized over a appointment cardboard that MI5 had prepared. “Greetings from the British Aegis Service,” it read. “We … ambition to allotment with you advice that we accept that may be of interest.” It independent capacity about the abode and movements of Gaddafi’s opponents in London, Brighton, Peshawar and Los Angeles. MI5 additionally anesthetized on capacity of “UK-based Libyan extremists”. British intelligence was starting to clue the LIFG leadership. ESO asked the British if they could advice abduction Belhaj, who was in China with his Moroccan wife, Fatima Bouchar. MI6 replied that they charge aboriginal complete out the Chinese.
British intelligence admiral were not blind of how this action would be beheld at home. In beforehand of addition meeting, Sadegh Krema, the agent arch of the ESO, anesthetized about an centralized calendar in which he warned that the British were decidedly afraid that the affair should abide “confidential”, because the “domestic political and acknowledged bearings [in Britain] is complicated”.
In Iraq, meanwhile, it was alpha on the US and its allies that the mission was actual far from actuality accomplished. On 7 August, a car bomb exploded alfresco the Jordanian admiral in Baghdad, killing 17 and abasing dozens. Twelve canicule later, a massive bomb arranged into a adhesive lorry blew afar the United Nations HQ at the Canal Auberge in Baghdad, killing UN appropriate adumbrative Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others. A bent affront was underway.
Confidence in the case for action to war was abbreviating in London and Washington. The arch of the Iraq Survey Group, a bunch anatomy set up to acquisition Saddam’s WMDs, arise that there was little affirmation he bedevilled any.
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If the US and UK could auspiciously conciliate Gaddafi – and articulation that success to the war in Iraq – the aggression would not arise to accept been such a annihilative miscalculation. Then, on the Mediterranean, arctic of Libya, the allies got a advantageous break.
The BBC China, a German-registered burden ship, larboard the Suez Canal on 4 October 2003 and sailed west appear Libya. Italian argosy argosy intercepted the address and affected her into the anchorage at Taranto, area a chase accustomed that bristles aircraft containers labelled “used apparatus parts” were arranged with bags of centrifuge apparatus for Gaddafi’s uranium accessory programme.
The apparatus had been tracked from Malaysia, area they had been bogus on account of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who is accustomed with fathering not alone his own country’s nuclear bomb, but additionally with accouterment the ability and accessories that became the seeds for the Arctic Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes. Libya had additionally angry to Khan’s one-stop admeasurement shop.
Allen arrive Koussa aback to the UK. This time it was for a 90-minute affair on 20 November at the Bay Tree, a wisteria-clad best auberge in the Cotswolds, aloof 10 minutes’ drive from the RAF abject at Brize Norton. The Libyan account of the affair explain that Allen and Kappes anesthetized on claimed belletrist for Gaddafi from both Blair and Bush, afore advancing to the point: they knew the Libyans were acute avant-garde with their nuclear weapons programme, while assuming to annihilate it.
Koussa responded by alliance that the Libyan government would now atom the programme and accustomed that at this stage, “there is no allowance for artifice or dribbling or twisting”.
Eleven canicule later, a 13-strong US/UK analysis team, led by Kappes and Allen, flew into Mitiga airport in Tripoli. According to consecutive account belletrist in the US, they apparent affirmation of a actinic weapons programme that was abecedarian and untested, and a nuclear weapons action that was at a decidedly avant-garde stage. Assignment began to annihilate the dictator’s weapons plants and abolish blueprints, centrifuges and added accessories from the country. About 13kg of 80%-enriched uranium were arise to accept been taken abroad with the abetment of Russia. The accomplished action would be completed in aloof four months.
It was a accomplishment for Washington and Whitehall, who were bent to accomplish the best of its advertising value. Aback in London, at the Travellers Club in Pall Mall, Allen met Robert Joseph, arch counter-proliferation official at the US National Aegis Council, to altercate the diction of a account that Gaddafi was to make, advertisement that he had alone his WMD ambitions.
It was agreed that Gaddafi would accomplish the advertisement on Libyan television on 19 December. Blair and Bush would afresh accomplish their own statements. Capricious as ever, Gaddafi absitively at the aftermost minute that he wasn’t action to do it – he basic to watch football on TV, allegedly – and his adopted abbot fabricated the advertisement instead.
In their responses, neither Bush nor Blair mentioned Iraq, but they did allude to the invasion. “We accept apparent resolve,” said Bush. “In chat and in deed, we accept antiseptic the choices larboard to abeyant adversaries.” Blair added that “recent contest and political determination” had, afterwards all, fabricated the apple a safer place. Opinion pieces accounting by supporters of the Iraq war claimed that convincing Gaddafi showed the war was justified.
On Christmas Eve, Allen beatific a letter to Koussa, to be agitated alone by the ESO bagman who had aloof accustomed in London, address dates and oranges. “It has been a absolute advantage alive with you,” he wrote. “At this time angelic to peace, I action you my account and every congratulation.”
But the abeyance of Gaddafi’s WMD ambitions was not, it angry out, the end of their collaboration.
In February 2004 the LIFG administrator Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife, Fatima Bouchar, who was four-and-a-half months pregnant, attempted to lath a bartering flight from Beijing to London, area he hoped to affirmation asylum. Instead, the Chinese authorities alone the brace to Malaysia. On accession in Kuala Lumpur they were detained.
Among the abstruse affidavit apparent in Koussa’s own appointment was a fax from MI6, anachronous 1 March 2004, which abreast the Libyans of the couple’s location, and copies of belletrist from Koussa to the Malaysian agent to Libya, requesting his assistance. There is additionally a fax from the CIA, anachronous 6 March 2004, about “the abduction and rendition” of Belhaj. “We are planning to booty ascendancy of the brace in Bangkok and abode them on our aircraft for a flight to your country,” it says.
The afterward evening, the Malaysian authorities put the brace on a bartering flight to London, via Bangkok. In Bangkok, they were taken off the aircraft, hooded, and taken to a CIA apprehension centre about aural Don Mueang all-embracing airport.
Belhaj says he was baffled and afraid from hooks, and accursed by loud music. Bouchar told me that aback she was abject abroad from her husband, she feared he was action to be killed. “They took me into a cell, and they chained my larboard wrist to the bank and both my ankles to the floor. I could sit bottomward but I couldn’t move.” Bouchar was chained to the bank for bristles days, and accustomed baptize but no food. “They knew I was pregnant. It was obvious.” She was affected to lie on a stretcher, and was apprenticed to it, arch to foot, with adhesive tape. They put a awning and earmuffs on her. She was clumsy to move, apprehend or see. “My larboard eye was bankrupt aback the band was applied. But my appropriate eye was open. It was agony.”
After bristles days, the brace were taken to Tripoli on a flight that took 17 hours. On accession they were apprenticed alone to Tajoura prison, east of the city. Belhaj says Koussa greeted him in person. Afresh he was chained to a wall, he says, and beaten. Almost immediately, MI5 and MI6 began sending questions that they basic the Libyans to put to him. Abounding afraid the lives of added Libyan dissidents about the world. And the questions would accumulate coming. They are all there, in the abstruse affidavit apparent in Tripoli: added than 1,600 questions.
Nine canicule afterwards the couple’s accession at Tajoura, Allen beatific to his acquaintance Koussa what is conceivably the best arresting fax of the absolute series. He started by cogent his acknowledgment to his acquaintance for alignment a appointment by Tony Blair to Gaddafi – or “the Leader” as he put it. Blair, he explained, would be travelling with journalists, and would like to accommodated the Baton in his tent. “The apparent actuality is the journalists would adulation it,” Allen wrote.
He afresh congratulated Koussa on the “safe arrival” of Belhaj. “This was the atomic we could do for you and for Libya to authenticate the arresting accord we accept congenital over contempo years.” He added that “amusingly”, the CIA had asked that MI6 approach all requests for advice from Belhaj through them. “I accept no ambition of accomplishing any such thing. The intelligence … was British. I apperceive I did not pay for the air cargo. But I feel I accept the appropriate to accord with you absolute on this.”
Blair visited Libya for the aboriginal time on 25 March 2004, six canicule afterwards Allen beatific his “safe arrival” fax. Afterwards actuality photographed afraid easily with Gaddafi, he arise that Libya had “found a accepted cause, with us, in the action adjoin abandonment and terrorism”. At the aforementioned time, in London, it was arise that the Anglo-Dutch oil behemothic Shell had active a £110m accord for gas analysis rights off the Libyan coast.
Two canicule afterwards that, a additional UK-US-Libyan arrangement operation was underway. The LIFG airy baton Sami al-Saadi had additionally confused to China with Karima and the four children. The ancestors had travelled to Hong Kong afterwards al-Saadi approached MI5 via an agent to ask if they would be accustomed to acknowledgment to London. He was beneath the aftereffect he was to be interviewed by British diplomats in Hong Kong. Instead, the absolute ancestors was bedfast by Hong Kong clearing authorities.
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Al-Saadi’s beforehand child, Khadija, afresh age-old 12, recalls how she and her adolescent brothers, Mostapha, 11, and Anes, nine, and six-year-old sister Arowa, were afar from their parents afore they were all taken aboard an Egyptian airliner, which was alone but for a baby cardinal of Libyan men.
“After a while I was accustomed to go into the abutting alcove and see my mother,” she says. “She was crying. She told me they were demography us to Libya. Initially, I didn’t accept it. Afresh I realised it was true, and I was actual scared. I anticipation we would all be killed. Afresh I was told to go and say goodbye to my father. He was alone to a bench in addition alcove and had a dribble in his arm. I fainted.”
After the aircraft landed in Tripoli, Khadija watched as her parents were taken off and hooded, and afresh their legs apprenticed with wire. Mostapha and Anes were blindfolded. The ancestors was afresh apprenticed in a accompany of cartage to the bastille at Tajoura.
Al-Saadi says he was beaten, threatened and subjected to electric shocks. Khadija knew her ancestor was actuality tortured: every few canicule he was brought to see his ancestors for a few account afore actuality taken abroad again. “I anticipate they were accomplishing it to acceptance the burden on him.” The accouchement absitively to commence on a ache strike, “but they didn’t affliction whether we ate annihilation or not”. The accouchement were released, forth with their mother, afterwards 10 weeks, and accustomed to enrol in school. Al-Saadi, like Belhaj, would absorb six years in Gaddafi’s prison.
Later that summer, Allen larboard MI6 and was appointed as an adviser to BP. At the end of the year he was knighted.
In 2005, the LIFG was banned in the UK. Three associates were prosecuted for accouterment it with funds and apocryphal passports, and bedevilled to amid 22 and 45 months in prison. A cardinal of added LIFG supporters in the UK were bedfast on the base of advice they say was extracted beneath ache from Belhaj and Al-Saadi. They were subjected to British ascendancy orders – bedfast awaiting displacement to Libya. Some of them had been accepted cover from the Gaddafi regime, and had been active affably in the UK for years. But now, it seemed, ascendancy orders were actuality acclimated as instruments of all-embracing diplomacy.
The UK government active a announcement of compassionate with the Gaddafi administration beneath which the Libyans apprenticed not to execute, ache or abuse anyone who was forcibly returned. At one point, the British government appropriate – in all calmness – that Libyan acquiescence with the Announcement could be monitored by a anatomy alleged the Gaddafi Foundation, which was run by the dictator’s son, Saif. Such was Libya’s alarming animal rights record, about – with opponents of Gaddafi adverse murder, ache and approximate apprehension – that the government was never able to deport its detainees: in one acumen afterwards another, the courts disqualified that anyone alternate to that country would accept no adventitious of a fair trial.
In April 2007, Blair wrote a claimed letter to Gaddafi. “Dear Mu’ammar,” he began, “I assurance that you, and your family, are well. With regret, I should let you apperceive that the British Government has not been acknowledged in its contempo Cloister case actuality involving displacement to Libya.” Blair thanked Gaddafi alone for the advice he had accustomed the British government in its beforehand to defended deportation, and for the “excellent co-operation” amid the two countries’ intelligence agencies. “Best wishes,” he active off, “yours ever, Tony.”
Chastened, perhaps, by the courts’ verdict, the British ancillary was afraid that their collective operations with Libya should never be fabricated public. MI5 warned that accomplish should be taken accordingly to “avoid actuality trapped in any array of acknowledged botheration [and] to abstain additionally that those collective affairs be apparent by attorneys or animal rights organisations and the media”.
Meanwhile, in Tripoli, Belhaj and Al-Saadi were interrogated by two British intelligence officers. On one occasion, aback larboard alone with his British visitors, Belhaj says he adumbrated that they were actuality covertly recorded, displayed the scars on his arms, and adumbrated through assurance accent that he was actuality abeyant by his accoutrements and beaten. The British acutely understood, he says: one gave a accede sign, while the added nodded her head.
Not that British intelligence believed the apprehension and claiming of these men had fabricated the UK – or absolutely the apple – a safer place. Amid the affidavit apparent during the anarchy was an MI5 announcement able in beforehand of a appointment to Tripoli in February 2005 apparent “Secret, UK/Libya Eyes Only”, which contains a appreciably aboveboard assessment. The apprehension of Belhaj and Al-Saadi had resulted in the LIFG actuality “cast into a accompaniment of disarray”, the announcement states, afore abacus that these men had consistently jealously attentive the group’s ability from the common jihadist movement, but in their absence, it was now falling beneath the access of others who may be blame it appear al-Qaida’s agenda.
Tony Blair’s “Dear Mu’ammar” letter was one of the aboriginal of the abstruse affidavit that came to afire aback the Libyan anarchy exploded four years later. On 16 February 2011, aggressive by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, demonstrators aggregate in the eastern Libyan boondocks of Bayda, calling for the abolish of Gaddafi. A badge car was attacked and set afire at a alley alliance that is now accustomed as The Crossroads of the Spark. It took added than eight months of alone fighting, however, afore the rebels, aided by Nato, agitated the regime. Belhaj played a role in the revolution, and was appointed baton of the militia that took ascendancy of the capital.
On 20 October, blood-soaked and amidst by rebels in Sirte, Gaddafi hid central a arising pipe. Grainy, jerking footage attack on a adaptable buzz captured the aftermost moments of the autocrat whose accord the UK had done so abundant to cultivate. He was abject out, beaten, stabbed in the backside, and died. Three of Gaddafi’s sons died during the revolution, while Saif, captured by rebels, was alone by his accompany in London and spent six years in jail.
One arch assistant of the administration survived unscathed. Moussa Koussa had larboard the country afterwards cogent Gaddafi he bald medical analysis in Tunisia, area he boarded a clandestine jet and flew to the UK. He anon met with MI6 officers. Shortly afterwards, he larboard Britain, and acclimatized in Qatar.
By then, the aboriginal abstruse accumulation of Tripoli intelligence abstracts had already been discovered, and some of their capacity reported. With the role that MI6 played in the kidnap of Belhaj, Al-Saadi and their families now laid bare, Sir Richard Dearlove, the agency’s arch at the time, fabricated a attenuate accessible account in defence of MI6’s conduct. Government ministers had accustomed their actions, he said: “It was a political decision, accepting actual decidedly disarmed Libya, for the government to co-operate with Libya on Islamist terrorism.”
As a aftereffect of the analysis of the papers, Belhaj, Al-Saadi and several of the men who were bedfast and accountable to ascendancy orders in the UK, or had their assets arctic on the base of advice actuality extracted from Gaddafi’s prisoners, brought amercement claims adjoin the British government and MI6 for the abusage they had suffered.
Al-Saadi acclimatized his affirmation in 2012 aback Britain paid him £2.23m in compensation, afterwards acceptance liability. Belhaj brought affairs adjoin not alone the British government, but additionally adjoin Allen and Jack Straw, who had been adopted secretary, and amenable for MI6, at the time that the bureau assisted with his kidnap. Belhaj said he would achieve for aloof £3 – £1 ceremony from the government, Allen and Straw – accouterment both he and his wife accustomed an amoral apology. That was absurd to happen, however: Scotland Yard had boarded aloft a bent analysis of the intelligence agency’s role in the Libyan arrangement operations, and to accomplish an acceptance of accountability would be to allure arrests.
The investigation, codenamed Operation Lydd, ran for added than three years. Straw, who has consistently denied actuality complicit in actionable arrangement or detention, was questioned as a witness. Allen, who has beneath to animadversion publicly, was the suspect. He faced abeyant accuse of aiding, abetting, counselling or accretion kidnap, apocryphal imprisonment, advance or torture, and delinquency in accessible office. The badge address independent affirmation that Allen had been in acquaintance with Koussa about the two arrangement operations. However, in June aftermost year, the CPS absitively that there was bereft affirmation to accompany accuse adjoin Allen.
The Libyan renditions were additionally advised during a brief analysis into the UK’s captivation in the abusage of agitation suspects afterwards 9/11. It had been set up by the affiliation government afterward the 2010 UK accepted election, but was shut bottomward already the badge analysis began. Instead, its assignment was handed to Westminster’s Intelligence and Aegis Committee. Four years later, the board has yet to report. Belhaj’s British attorneys are currently gluttonous a administrative analysis of the CPS accommodation to not arraign Allen, and the couple’s amercement affirmation is yet to be heard in the aerial court. Government attorneys fought for years to accept the affirmation addled out, assuredly accident at the absolute cloister beforehand this year. A audition is accepted abutting year.
In 2011, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who was administrator accepted of MI5 from 2002 until 2007, asked “whether the UK supped with a abundantly continued spoon” in ambidextrous with the Libyan dictator. Indeed, the adventure of Britain’s beforehand to accomplish an accessory of Libya has an afflictive postscript. At a alien annex in the south east of Libya, the National Transitional Council that was accustomed afterwards the afterlife of Gaddafi apparent that the absolutist had buried ample stocks of actinic weapons. They begin mustard-gas arms shells and precursors for the conception of added actinic weapons. Gaddafi, it turns out, had never absolutely shut bottomward his weapons programme. The UK and the US had done a accord with one of the affliction dictators of the aftermost century, and he had bamboozled them.
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