US and UK spy agencies built close ties with their Libyan counterparts during the so-called War on Terror, according to documents discovered at the office of Col Gaddafi's former spy chief.
The papers suggest the CIA abducted several suspected militants from 2002 to 2004 and handed them to Tripoli.
The UK's MI6 also apparently gave the Gaddafi regime details of dissidents.
The documents, found by Human Rights Watch workers, have not been seen by the BBC or independently verified.
Thousands of pieces of correspondence from US and UK officials were uncovered by reporters and activists in an office apparently used by Moussa Koussa, who served for years as Col Gaddafi's spy chief before becoming foreign minister.
He defected in the early part of the rebellion, flying to the UK and then on to Qatar.
Rights groups have long accused him of involvement in atrocities, and had called on the UK to arrest him at the time.
The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Tripoli says the documents illuminate a short period when the Libyan intelligence agency was a trusted and valued ally of both MI6 and the CIA, with the tone of exchanges between agents breezy and bordering on the chummy.
Human Rights Watch accused the CIA of condoning torture.
"It wasn't just abducting suspected Islamic militants and handing them over to the Libyan intelligence," said Peter Bouckaert of HRW.
"The CIA also sent the questions they wanted Libyan intelligence to ask and, from the files, it's very clear they were present in some of the interrogations themselves," he said.
The papers outline the rendition of several suspects, including one that Human Rights Watch has identified as Abdel Hakim Belhaj, known in the documents as Abdullah al-Sadiq, who is now the military commander of the anti-Gaddafi forces in Tripoli.
The Americans snatched him in South East Asia before flying him to Tripoli in 2004, the documents claim.
Mr Belhaj, who was involved in an Islamist group attempting to overthrow Col Gaddafi in the early 2000s, had told the Associated Press news agency earlier this week that he had been rendered by the Americans, but held no grudge.
The CIA would not comment on the specifics of the allegations.
Spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said: "It can't come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats."
The documents also reveal details about the UK's relationship with the Gaddafi regime.
The UK intelligence agency apparently helped to write a speech for Col Gaddafi in 2004, when the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair was encouraging the colonel to give up his weapons programme.
And British officials also insisted that Mr Blair's famous 2004 meeting with Col Gaddafi should be in his Bedouin tent, according to the UK's Independent newspaper, whose journalists also discovered the documents.
"[The prime minister's office is] keen that the prime minister meet the leader in his tent," the paper quotes a memo from an MI6 agent as saying.
"I don't know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is the journalists would love it."
In another memo, also seen by the Independent, UK intelligence appeared to give Tripoli details of a Libyan dissident who had been freed from jail in Britain.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague played down the revelations, telling Sky News that they "relate to a period under the previous government so I have no knowledge of those, of what was happening behind the scenes at that time".
Mr Blair and US President George W Bush lobbied hard to bring Col Gaddafi out of international isolation in the years after the 9/11 attacks, as Libya moved to normalise relations with former enemies in the West.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14774533
The Taliban were our chums at one time too
The Taliban were our chums at one time too
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: The Taliban were our chums at one time too
Where does that article mention the Taliban were in Libya during the WOT?
Re: The Taliban were our chums at one time too
Journalists are fascinated by any picture opportunity. As Blair didn't have a tent for greeting people OBVIOUSLY meeting in a tent would make for good copy. If Gaddafi regularly meet in a mock up Thomas the Tank Engine, then that is where Blair would have wanted his photo.The Article wrote:"I don't know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is the journalists would love it."
Do these journalists know nothing about journalists?
Bah!
Re: The Taliban were our chums at one time too
The Hen wrote:Journalists are fascinated by any picture opportunity. As Blair didn't have a tent for greeting people OBVIOUSLY meeting in a tent would make for good copy. If Gaddafi regularly meet in a mock up Thomas the Tank Engine, then that is where Blair would have wanted his photo.The Article wrote:"I don't know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is the journalists would love it."
Do these journalists know nothing about journalists?
Seeing as it's Bliar we are talking about; "If Gaddafi regularly meet in a mock up Thomas the Tank Engine, and requested Bliar wear a pink tutu, in blackface, singing "Mameee" whilst dancing on a pyre of burning bibles and buggering the corpse of Winston Churchill, then that is where Blair would have wanted his photo."
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: The Taliban were our chums at one time too
Oh dear, chickens coming home to roost..
The Libyan rebel leader tortured after Britain and America turned him over to Gaddafi’s henchmen could win £1million compensation from UK taxpayers.
Abdel Hakim Belhadj – now working with Nato to hunt down the tyrant – has vowed to sue Britain for helping to snatch him in 2004.
As well as ‘selling’ him to the Libyans, the UK allowed his ‘extraordinary rendition’ via British territory Diego Garcia, secret documents reveal.
Belhadj claims he was forced to take truth drugs and left hanging by his wrists in a Tripoli cell as his interrogators demanded to know the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden.
At some point, he says, he was questioned by a British agent.
The files appear to blow the lid off years of obfuscation and outright denials that Britain was involved in the illegal transfer of terrorist suspects to countries that used torture.
It was not until 2008, four years after Belhadj’s ordeal began, that ministers even admitted that British landing strips in dependent territories were used for torture flights.
Now the revelations contained within the files discovered in Libyan government offices mean that Britain could be in the unenviable position of paying a large sum to a man likely to be a key official in the new Tripoli regime.
The disclosures came on a day when:
It was announced that the bombshell rendition claims and UK links to Gaddafi’s regime would be investigated by the Gibson torture inquiry within weeks;
Labour’s Jack Straw was accused of ‘woeful ignorance’ after he claimed he was kept in the dark over rendition by MI6 during his time as Foreign Secretary;
It emerged that Britain directly arranged the ‘extraordinary rendition’ flight of another suspect to Tripoli from Hong Kong;
David Cameron suggested that Britain will keep bombing Libya until Colonel Gaddafi is brought to justice.
It is the alleged treatment of Belhadj – which Whitehall sources are now claiming was part of a ‘ministerially-sanctioned’ policy – that illustrates how Britain dramatically changed sides in Libya.
Although he was plotting against Gaddafi, Belhadj was at the mercy of an alliance in which Britain and Libya were forging ever-closer ties culminating in Tony Blair’s infamous ‘Deal in the Desert’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1X7XuaKrk
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
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Sue U
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Re: The Taliban were our chums at one time too
Is that all? Chicken feed. Settling the claim and paying him promptly is a cheap way to promote his continued cooperation.The Libyan rebel leader tortured after Britain and America turned him over to Gaddafi’s henchmen could win £1million compensation from UK taxpayers.
GAH!
Re: The Taliban were our chums at one time too
Assuming he knows anything useful, that is.
yrs,
rubato
yrs,
rubato
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Sue U
- Posts: 9143
- Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:59 pm
- Location: Eastern Megalopolis, North America (Midtown)
Re: The Taliban were our chums at one time too
It's not where he's been, it's where he's going:
OP wrote:The papers outline the rendition of several suspects, including one that Human Rights Watch has identified as Abdel Hakim Belhaj, known in the documents as Abdullah al-Sadiq, who is now the military commander of the anti-Gaddafi forces in Tripoli.
GAH!
Re: The Taliban were our chums at one time too
'It's the least I can do, Cherie. After all, I am godfather to his kids too you know.'
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”