Archive for September 2011
MI5 spied on Libya torture victims
MI5 asked Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s secret services for regular updates on what terrorist suspects were revealing under interrogation in Libyan prisons, where torture was routine.
The security service also agreed to trade information with Libyan spymasters on 50 British-based Libyans judged to be a threat to Gadaffi’s regime.
The disclosures come from intelligence documents left lying around in the ruins of the British embassy in Tripoli for anyone to find.
They include an MI5 paper marked “UK/Libya eyes only secret”, which shows that the service provided Gadaffi’s spies with a trove of intelligence about Libyan dissidents in London, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester.
Other documents seen by The Sunday Times in the abandoned offices of British and Libyan officials reveal that:
*The Ministry of Defence invited the dictator’s sons Saadi and Khamis Gadaffi, whose forces have massacred civilians during Libya’s revolution, to a combat display at SAS headquarters and a dinner at the Cavalry and Guards Club in Mayfair.
*Tony Blair helped another son, Saif Gadaffi, with his PhD thesis, beginning a personal letter with the words “Dear Engineer Saif”.
*The Foreign Office planned to use Prince Andrew in a secret strategy to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, from prison in Scotland and offset the risk of retaliation if he died in jail. In fact, Megrahi was released anyway.
The cache of documents shows how close the governments of both Blair and Gordon Brown were to a brutal regime that was overthrown last month when pro-democracy rebels seized Tripoli.
Nowhere is this closeness more evident than in the intelligence sphere. The MI5 paper for Gadaffi’s security services contains detailed information about members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a militant dissident outfit with cells in Britain.
The document, prepared ahead of an MI5 visit to Tripoli in 2005, formally requested that Libyan intelligence should provide access to detainees held by secret police and to “timely debriefs” of interrogations.
It added: “The more timely [the] information the better … Such intelligence is most valuable when it is current. It is notable that LIFG members in the UK become aware of the detention of members overseas within a relatively short period.” Read the rest of this entry »
Gadaffi and sons flee like rats up a water pipe
The ousted Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi and his sons may have evaded capture by fleeing through waterpipes large enough to hide military vehicles, rebel commanders believe.
The pipes of the Great Manmade River project, designed to supply Libyan coastal cities with water from a huge natural reservoir beneath the desert, are up to 13ft in diameter, the largest built. They would provide excellent cover from Nato spy planes, which have joined the hunt for Gadaffi in the past week, according to two senior advisers on the rebel military council in Tripoli.
Gadaffi’s greatest engineering feat runs for 328 miles south from the town of Bani Walid, southeast of Tripoli, to a point just north of the oasis town of Sabha. It could double as an underground bunker for the scud missiles, rocket launchers and grad missiles that Gadaffi is still believed to possess, the advisers said.
Rebels believe that Gadaffi, whom they say was last seen making a telephone call from Bani Walid’s small airport, has fled through the pipes towards Sabha while thousands of Libyan army soldiers block the rebels’ advance south.
The $33 billion (£20 billion) pipeline project was begun in 1984 and three of its five phases are complete, supplying water to much of the country. But supplies to western Libya, including Tripoli, were shut down on August 21, fuelling speculation that the fleeing dictator had a military purpose for the network.
During the past week rebel forces have massed on the outskirts of Bani Walid.
They have been pursuing the former Libyan leader and his sons since storming the capital on August 20. But days of heavy fighting in Tripoli, followed by a flurry of negotiations between the rebels, tribal elders and the Gadaffi family slowed down the hunt as Nato monitored Libyan troop movements in the south of the country.
Gadaffi’s wife Safia, his daughter Aisha and sons Mohammed and Hannibal fled last week to Algeria. Rebel commanders believe there is still a chance that Gadaffi himself and at least two other sons at large in Libya — Saif al-Islam and Saadi — will surrender. Others say Gadaffi will have used this week’s lull in fighting to move closer to the borders with Niger, Chad, Algeria and Sudan. Read the rest of this entry »
Ministers wanted Prince Andrew to cosy up to Gadaffi
Ministers wanted Prince Andrew to help persuade Colonel Gadaffi not to “exact vengeance” on Britain if the Lockerbie bomber died in a Scottish prison.
Secret papers seen by The Sunday Times reveal that the Duke of York’s relationship with the dictator was seen as a key plank in a strategy to facilitate the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi or to avoid violent repercussions should he die from cancer while in jail.
The documents undermine claims by Gordon Brown’s government that it played no role in trying to secure Megrahi’s return to Tripoli. They underline the threat his death would pose to the UK’s commercial interests in Libya and to the safety of British citizens.
The plan to exploit Prince Andrew’s contacts with Gadaffi is contained in a letter from Rob Dixon, head of the Foreign Office’s North Africa team, to David Miliband, then foreign secretary, and minister Bill Rammell.
Until now only censored versions of the sensitive Foreign Office papers on the release of the Lockerbie bomber have been released by the government.
However, unredacted papers discovered in Tripoli reveal that Gadaffi wanted Megrahi returned “at all costs”.
One memo from Dixon, dated January 22, 2009, states: “We also believe that Libya might seek to exact vengeance on the UK in the event of an unsuccessful application to transfer Megrahi.” Read the rest of this entry »
The historic desert deal returns to haunt Britain
Standing inside Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s bedouin tent outside Tripoli, Tony Blair smiled broadly as he extended Britain’s historic “hand of friendship” to the Libyan dictator.
The 2004 deal in the desert was supposed to mark the moment when “Mad Dog” Gadaffi was transformed from an international pariah who sponsored the IRA and other terrorists into a “strong partner” of the western world.
In exchange for surrendering his chemical and nuclear weapons programmes and helping the West in the fight against global terrorism, Britain’s then prime minister agreed to reopen diplomatic and trade links, thus allowing the Libyan dictator to rebrand himself as a man the civilised world could do business with.
More than seven years on, Blair has conceded to being appalled that Gadaffi, with whom he was on first-name terms, has been ordering the killing of his own civilians. He nevertheless maintains that his original decision to bring Gadaffi in from the cold was right.
This weekend, as a new Libya rises from the wreckage of the fugitive dictator’s former regime, compelling evidence is emerging to suggest that history may not view Blair’s initiative in quite so sympathetic a light.
Among discarded papers seen in the British embassy in Tripoli by The Sunday Times last week are MI5 and MI6 documents that chronicle the more shadowy — and morally ambiguous — fallout from the desert deal.
They show that as part of the Libyan rapprochement, Britain agreed to send a delegation of MI5 officers to meet their opposite numbers in the Libyan secret service in Tripoli in February 2005.
An MI5 document prepared for this visit — headed “UK/Libya eyes only” — lists the names, dates of birth, roles and locations in Britain of up to 50 exiled members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a militant organisation opposed to Gadaffi’s regime. MI5 had been investigating the group since members first settled in Britain using the liberal asylum rules of the early 1990s.
The agency believed it had growing links with Al-Qaeda. Members were suspected of supplying cash and false documents. It was believed they also helped to organise travel for jihadists from Britain to Iraq to fight western forces.
Some hardliners had recently joined the group in Britain. That led MI5 to fear they might be actively involved in planning terrorist attacks against the West.
The MI5 report summarising this material included a formal request to the Libyan regime. This explained that both MI5 and Libyan intelligence had a mutual interest in thwarting the activities of the LIFG. The paper conveyed a request for “co-operation” from Libyan intelligence chiefs.
It said: “We would value your co-operation in the following areas to enable us to achieve our shared objectives … Sharing intelligence on the activities of members in the UK.
“Such intelligence — particularly information relating to any financial transactions or to actual operational activity — is key to the security service working with the police to prosecute members of the group. The more timely information the better.”
The MI5 paper listed the details of dozens of LIFG members in Britain. A chart in one document identifies 17 key individuals in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Wales where key group members were based.
A rider to the report says the information is being communicated “to the recipient government [Libya] … for research and analysis purposes only” and should not be the basis for any action.
Human rights campaigners said there was no reason why Libya would ever comply with such conditions.
Gavin Millar QC, a barrister who has acted in terrorrelated torture cases in the British courts, said: “These documents show MI5 acting on its own, without any CIA involvement, and dealing directly with an evil regime. ”
A senior Whitehall official declined to discuss details of the intelligence-sharing agreement. But he said it was not the practice of MI5 to condone, engage in or encourage others to engage in torture or other forms of mistreatment.
Those comments reflect official policy but may not reassure those who warned years ago that new Labour’s decision to cosy up to the colonel might one day prove to have been ill-advised.
Blair helped Saif Gadaffi with his LSE doctorate
Tony Blair helped Saif al-Islam Gadaffi, the son of the ousted Libyan dictator, with his controversial PhD thesis, according to documents found at the ransacked British embassy in Tripoli.
In a copy of a signed letter from Blair to “Engineer Saif”, the former Labour prime minister thanks Gadaffi for outlining his “interesting” thesis for the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and responds with his “warm good wishes”.
Replying to the correspondence from Gadaffi, Blair cites three examples of the power of greater collaboration between government, civil society and business “that might help you with your studies”.
The PhD has since become mired in allegations of plagiarism. A year after being awarded it in 2008, the despot’s son donated £1.5m to the LSE — one of a string of payments from Libya being investigated by the university.
When writing his 429-page thesis, The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions, Gadaffi sought to portray himself as a modern reformer who would succeed his brutal father.
However, any veneer of respectability quickly slipped away with the onset of the Libyan uprising.
Gadaffi, 39, warned that the country’s streets would run with “rivers of blood” and promised: “We will keep fighting until the last man.”
In Blair’s letter to Gadaffi dated March 5, 2007, the former prime minister extols the changes in Africa brought about by the Make Poverty History campaign.
“The reason this campaign had so much influence was that it brought together an unusual coalition of players from Bono to the Pope, reaching into the homes of people all around the world with a simple but inspiring message of hope,” writes Blair. Read the rest of this entry »
