Abu Anas al-Libi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)

[Magda Hassan]

"Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers" the Gaddafi Plot chapters

Excerpts from the book.….
The MI6/Al Qaeda con*spir*acy, Part 1
The MI6-funding of Islamic extrem*ists and Al Qaeda mem*bers to assas*sin*ate Col*onel Gad*dafi, is the main reason why David Shayler finally left MI5. It is the real case that made [him] quit'. To quote David:
"Although I knew about the plot before mak*ing my decision to leave I believed at the time that it was more MI6 Boys Own' stuff I was nev*er*the*less phys*ic*ally sickened by the fact that MI6 wanted to spon*sor Islamic extrem*ists to carry out ter*ror*ism. At around the time I was debat*ing whether to leave because of the Vic*toria Brit*tain invest*ig*a*tion, MI6's David Wat*son told me he had in fact sup*plied his agent with $40,000 to buy weapons to execute the oper*a*tion to assas*sin*ate Gaddafi.
"I joined the ser*vices to stop ter*ror*ism and pre*vent the deaths of inno*cent people, not to get involved in these despic*able and cow*ardly acts. I still can*not believe that the Prime Min*is*ter has refused to take my evid*ence or invest*ig*ate this mat*ter as this decision has sent out a clear mes*sage to the intel*li*gence ser*vices that they can fund ter*ror*ism; con*spire to murder people with impun*ity; and take enorm*ous risks with our security.
"After all, would you give an indi*vidual you hardly know who has admit*ted to con*nec*tions with Al Qaeda an enorm*ous sum to carry out a ter*ror*ist attack, when you know the group he is lead*ing is opposed to the val*ues of West*ern soci*ety? It is dif*fi*cult to ima*gine a greater dis*reg*ard and con*tempt for the lives and secur*ity of the Brit*ish people."
Key points

• The fol*low*ing issues arise from David's whis*tleblow*ing about MI6 sup*port for Al Qaeda:
  Con*trary to mis*in*form*a*tion pub*lished in some news*pa*pers, the fol*low*ing account was not bar-room gos*sip'. David's MI6 coun*ter*part, PT16/B David Wat*son, briefed him offi*cially on the plot as it unfol*ded. As MI5 officers both David and I knew the ser*i*ous threat the fund*ing of Al Qaeda posed at the time.
  
• Des*pite the then For*eign Sec*ret*ary Robin Cook's deni*als in 1998, I have now found out that intel*li*gence officer, , was MI6's man Tun*worth. He is a mem*ber of the Islamic Fight*ing Group (IFG) aka the Mil*it*ant Islamic Group, an Al Qaeda affil*i*ate based in Libya.
  French intel*li*gence has also estab*lished that lead*ing mem*bers of the IFG like Tun*worth are also mem*bers of Al Qaeda.
  
• The MI6 agent Tun*worth admit*ted his con*nec*tions with Islamic extrem*ists and Al Qaeda mem*bers dur*ing a debrief with his MI6 hand*ler David Wat*son, in late 19952 so MI6 can*not deny it did not know what it was enter*ing into.
  
• At the very least, MI6 failed to real*ise that it had prior intel*li*gence about an Al Qaeda coup in Libya. If suc*cess*ful, MI6 would have allowed Al Qaeda to take over an oil-rich state in North Africa, put*ting the lives of Brit*ish and US cit*izens, in par*tic*u*lar, at far greater risk.
  
• By the time MI6 paid the money, Osama Bin Laden's organ*isa*tion was already known to be respons*ible for the 1993 World Trade Centre bomb*ing and MI5 had set up G9C, a sec*tion ded*ic*ated to the task of defeat*ing Bin Laden and his affiliates.
  
• Under the 1994 Intel*li*gence Ser*vices Act, the real James Bonds do have a licence to kill or immunity for crim*inal acts car*ried out abroad in the course of their work, provided they gain the per*mis*sion of the For*eign Sec*ret*ary. But without that per*mis*sion they are break*ing the law, should they become involved in a con*spir*acy to murder and to cause ter*ror*ism. In this case, they did not even seek that permission.
  
• MI6 gave money to indi*vidu*als who posed a greater threat to our lives and secur*ity Al Qaeda to assas*sin*ate an indi*vidual who posed a lesser threat, Col*onel Gad*dafi. It just doesn't make any logical sense. In fact, it demon*strates that MI6 was motiv*ated by revenge on Gad*dafi, rather than any desire to pro*tect Brit*ish lives and national secur*ity, because he nation*al*ised the Libyan oil industry in 1976 at the expense of BP3.
  

How David was briefed on the conspiracy
In sum*mer 1995, at the height of the illegal invest*ig*a*tion into Vic*toria Brit*tain, David was first briefed on the plot. David Wat*son, David's coun*ter*part in MI6, asked to meet to dis*cuss an unusual case which he could not men*tion over the phone. At the sub*sequent meet*ing, PT16/B told David that:
A senior mem*ber of the Libyan mil*it*ary intel*li*gence ser*vice had walked into the Brit*ish embassy in Tunis and asked to meet the res*id*ent MI6 officer.
The Libyan walk-in' had asked for funds to lead a group of Islamic extrem*ists in an attemp*ted coup, which would involve the assas*sin*a*tion of Col*onel Gad*dafi, the head of the Libyan state.
Although the Libyan mil*it*ary intel*li*gence officer led the group, he had said he was not an Islamic extrem*ist himself.
The Libyan had a brief MI6 record, which PT16/B thought was enough to con*firm that the Libyan did have the access to the régime that he claimed.
In exchange for MI6's sup*port, the Libyan offered to hand over the two Lock*er*bie sus*pects after the coup. Get*ting them to the UK for trial had at the time been one of MI6's object*ives for about three years but there is no guar*an*tee that the coup plot*ters could have done this. It is debat*able whether the coup plot*ters would have had either the resources or expert*ise required to track down the sus*pects after their planned coup. At first, David was scep*tical to the point of ennui. After all, MI6 officers had often claimed that the Lock*er*bie two were about to be handed over or that Gad*dafi was about to die or be toppled but noth*ing had come of this sup*posedly keen and reli*able intelligence.
In the fol*low*ing weeks, PT16/B told David that the Libyan was code*named Tun*worth. At some point in the fol*low*ing weeks David briefly saw the prin*tout of MI6's record of him. It con*tained around two or three sep*ar*ate men*tions. They sup*por*ted his claim to be a senior mem*ber of Libyan mil*it*ary intel*li*gence but were not detailed. David checked the Libyan's name against Durbar and Star, MI5's records, but the ser*vice had no trace of him. David did not make any effort to remem*ber the name because he believed that the whole thing would come to noth*ing as other MI6 plots had done. Wat*son also issued at least two CX reports detail*ing intel*li*gence provided by Tun*worth at his meet*ing with the res*id*ent MI6 officer in Tunis4. David remem*bers it con*cerned changes in per*son*nel in the Libyan régime. MI5 had col*lat*eral for it so G9 assessed that Tun*worth had some access to the régime. David takes up the story:
"Through*out this pro*cess, I briefed my line man*ager, G9A/1 Jerry Mahoney until Decem*ber 1995, Paul Slim, after that about these devel*op*ments. As the oper*a*tion was in its infancy when Mahoney left, I don't believe that I told him any*thing other than the bare basics. When brief*ing his suc*cessor, Paul Slim, I told him that this might be more Boys' Own stuff' on the part of MI6 and that we shouldn't take it too ser*i*ously although we agreed to review this in the light of new information.
"It is incon*ceiv*able that G9A/1 did not think an MI6-funded plot to engin*eer a coup in Libya was worthy of men*tion*ing to his line man*ager, G9/0, Peter Mitchell. In turn, it is unthink*able that G9/0 did not raise the mat*ter with his line man*age*ment who would have informed his boss until the DG her*self had been made aware. I won*der if it was included in the first draft of Dame Stella's book and removed on the orders of the authorities."
In Decem*ber 1995, James Wor*th*ing, R/ME/C at MI6, cir*cu*lated CX95/ 534526 report to White*hall and other address*ees, warn*ing of a poten*tial coup in Libya. It con*firmed that a mem*ber of the rebel group gave detailed intel*li*gence to his MI6 hand*ler in anti*cip*a*tion of help from Bri*tain. The report clearly demon*strated that Wat*son knew that Tun*worth was plan*ning ter*ror*ism and his group had already been involved in attempts on Gaddafi's life:
"In late Novem*ber 1995 [Tunworth's iden*tity removed]7 described plans, in which he was involved, to over*throw Col*onel Gad*dafi. […] The coup is sched*uled to start at around the time of the next Gen*eral People's Con*gress on Feb*ru*ary 14, 1996. Coup will start with unrest in Tripoli, Mis*ra*tah and Benghazi." […]
"The coup plot*ters were respons*ible for the death of [blank Names removed to pro*tect security-blank] was about to take up the pos*i*tion as head of Mil*it*ary Intel*li*gence when he was forced off the Tripoli-Sirte road and was killed. The 2 coup plot*ters involved escaped unhurt. In August 1995, 3 army cap*tains who were part of the coup plot attemp*ted to kill Col*onel Gaddafi."
The report then lis*ted Libyan install*a*tions that would be attacked and described sup*port*ers in Libya's prin*cipal cit*ies and their occu*pa*tions. The start of the coup was to be sig*nalled through coded mes*sages on tele*vi*sion and radio. It also said that at least 250 British-made weapons were dis*trib*uted among the plotters.
Tun*worth also told his MI6 hand*ler that:
"plot*ters would have cars sim*ilar to those in Gaddafi's secur*ity entour*age with fake secur*ity num*ber plates. They would infilt*rate them*selves into the entour*age in order to kill or arrest Gaddafi…
"One group of mil*it*ary per*son*nel were being trained in the desert area near Kufra for the role of attack*ing Gad*dafi and his entour*age. The aim was to attack Gad*dafi after the GPC [Gen*eral People's Con*gress], but before he had returned to Sirte. One officer and 20 men were being trained for this attack."
David also remem*bers another MI6 CX report being issued about the plot in early 1996. It was a shop*ping list of the group's require*ments to carry out the coup, includ*ing the sup*ply of weapons and basics like jeeps and tents.
Around the same time, Christ*mas 1995, Wat*son told David that he had met Tun*worth, in Geneva and paid him $40,000. Jackie Barker, who had replaced Sue Thomas as G9A/15, told him that Wat*son had told her the same inform*a*tion in con*fid*ence'. Dur*ing routine G9/PT16 meet*ings around this time, officers occa*sion*ally men*tioned the plot. Wat*son then met Tun*worth on two fur*ther occa*sions early in 1996 in Geneva. David does not know of any fur*ther details except that Wat*son men*tioned that he had paid sim*ilar sums' to Tun*worth on each occa*sion. Although PT16/B never spe*cific*ally men*tioned it, it was tacitly under*stood that Wat*son was work*ing with the approval of his dir*ect line man*ager, PT16, Richard Bartlett.
Lack of gov*ern*ment sanction
At some point David can't be sure when exactly Wat*son men*tioned that the sub*mis*sion', MI6 jar*gon for the let*ter request*ing per*mis*sion from the For*eign Office for oth*er*wise illegal oper*a*tions, was going to go "all the way to the top". In about Janu*ary 1996, Wat*son told him that the sub*mis*sion had been suc*cess*ful, indic*at*ing that the For*eign Sec*ret*ary him*self had signed the doc*u*ment per*mit*ting the operation.9 When David briefed Paul Slim on the details of the plot, he spe*cific*ally drew atten*tion to the fact that the ser*vice only had Watson's word for this. He urged his boss to task senior MI5 man*age*ment to raise the mat*ter form*ally, to check that the oper*a*tion was legal.
Then, in either Feb*ru*ary or March 1996, David read two, pos*sibly three intel*li*gence reports quot*ing inde*pend*ent sources the Egyp*tian and Moroc*can intel*li*gence ser*vices. They all stated that an attack had been made on Col*onel Gad*dafi in Sirte, Libya. Two of the reports indic*ated that the attack*ers had tried to assas*sin*ate Gad*dafi when he was part of a motor*cade but had failed as they had tar*geted the wrong car. As a res*ult of the explo*sion and the ensu*ing chaos in which shots were fired, civil*ians and secur*ity police were maimed and killed.
"At a meet*ing shortly after, PT16/B ven*tured to me in a note of tri*umph that Tun*worth had been respons*ible for the attack. "Yes that was our man. We did it" was how he put it. He regarded it, curi*ously, as a tri*umph even though the object*ive of the oper*a*tion had not been met and report*ing indic*ated there had been civil*ian cas*u*al*ties. Des*pite that, I very much got the impres*sion that this was regarded as a coup for MI6 because it was play*ing up to the repu*ta*tion that the real James Bonds wanted to have. I then promptly passed the inform*a*tion on to my line man*ager, G9A/1. Although ini*tially reluct*ant, he said he would deal with the mat*ter. I've no idea whether he did. In later months, I asked Wat*son sev*eral times what had happened to Tun*worth, but was not given answers."
By this time, David had already decided to leave the ser*vice and was act*ively look*ing for jobs in the private sec*tor. As a res*ult of MI6 fund*ing Al Qaeda, on top of the gen*eral ineptitude and bungling I had wit*nessed, I also decided I no longer wanted to work for intel*li*gence ser*vices who had ceased to pro*tect demo*cracy and instead fun*ded our ter*ror*ist enemies. The ser*vices are sup*posed to pro*tect us, not put our lives at greater risk from ter*ror*ist attack. It was time to leave.
The MI6/Al Qaeda con*spir*acy, Part 2
David had briefed the MoS with the bare bones of the plot in the sum*mer of 1996 and again when pre*par*ing the dis*clos*ures of 24 August 1997. How*ever, given the con*tro*ver*sial and sens*it*ive nature of the mater*ial, he had always wanted to sub*mit it to the gov*ern*ment for invest*ig*a*tion. Since then, min*is*ters and other respons*ible agen*cies like the PM's ISC and the Cab*inet Office have con*sist*ently refused to take pos*ses*sion of David's evid*ence con*cern*ing the plot. Des*pite his repeatedly writ*ing to them to inform them that ele*ments of the ser*vices were oper*at*ing out*side the law.
As the author*it*ies had shown no interest in tak*ing his evid*ence, in early Decem*ber 1997 David gave Mark Urban, at the time the BBC's Defence and Dip*lo*matic Cor*res*pond*ent, a full, recor*ded inter*view about the MI6/Al Qaeda plot. Then, after he had entered into nego*ti*ations, David again tried to give his evid*ence to the Brit*ish author*it*ies, but they repeatedly refused to take it. By June 1998, Urban had stood up key aspects of the story. Although David urged Urban to sub*mit the doc*u*ment*ary to the author*it*ies for imme*di*ate clear*ance under the injunc*tion, BBC man*age*ment appeared reluct*ant to face the gov*ern*ment and the intel*li*gence ser*vices head-on. They sat on the pro*gramme, while they debated it internally.
By July 1998 the gov*ern*ment had shown no real will to come to a nego*ti*ated set*tle*ment with David. In frus*tra*tion at the government's fail*ure to dis*charge its demo*cratic duties by tak*ing his evid*ence and at the same time faced with BBC iner*tia, in July 1997 David told the MoS that he was look*ing into set*ting up an Inter*net site to ensure that the crimes of the intel*li*gence ser*vices could be prop*erly exposed.
"Noth*ing will threaten the secur*ity of MI5 agents or staff," he said, "or com*prom*ise its work*ing meth*ods. But there are vital mat*ters that need a pub*lic air*ing and the Inter*net is the way to do it."
David hoped the art*icle would prompt min*is*ters to take his evid*ence. As there was no response after a week, David again told the MoS that he inten*ded to pub*lish his dis*clos*ures  with due care for national secur*ity  on the Inter*net in the US, where it would be pro*tec*ted under the first amendment.
"I don't see how the Gov*ern*ment can com*plain," said David, "when I've been try*ing to talk to them for months."
Three days later, his www​.shayler​.com site was hacked, before it was even up and run*ning. Verio aka Tab*net, the ser*vice pro*vider in the US, said that the hack*ing was done by a pro*fes*sional, after the pass*word to gain access to the site was inter*cep*ted en route to David's com*puter. There is no actual evid*ence to indic*ate that the intel*li*gence ser*vices were respons*ible but they are the like*li*est cul*prits. Hack*ers do not nor*mally attack anti-establishment web*sites, par*tic*u*larly when they are not yet up and running.
On 31 July 1998, David and I met the MoS in Paris, in an effort get the MI6/Al Qaeda con*spir*acy out to a wider audi*ence. On the strict under*stand*ing that the news*pa*per sub*mit*ted the story to gov*ern*ment, David gave the paper the details of the plot (without men*tion*ing the names of intel*li*gence officers). Min*is*ters refused the paper per*mis*sion to pub*lish the inform*a*tion in any mean*ing*ful form, while also deny*ing the story. David also met Nick Rufford and David Lep*pard of The Sunday Times and gave them a brief*ing on the plot, with the same caveat. David comments:
"The denial and cen*sor*ship do not add up12. Either the dis*clos*ure is untrue, in which case the gov*ern*ment can*not cite national secur*ity reas*ons for sup*press*ing the inform*a*tion. Or the dis*clos*ure is true, in which case the gov*ern*ment has a duty to invest*ig*ate exactly how Brit*ish intel*li*gence officers came to use tax*pay*ers' money to fund ter*ror*ism and murder inno*cent civil*ians. The gov*ern*ment has used the injunc*tion and the 1989 OSA to restrain the free*dom of the press, in order to pro*tect itself from embar*rass*ment rather than pro*tect national security."
David's arrest in con*nec*tion with the Plot
Unbe*known to David and me, a couple of hours after he had legally13 sub*mit*ted his very ser*i*ous evid*ence to min*is*ters, those self-same min*is*ters sent an urgent request to extra*dite David for his ori*ginal dis*clos*ures which had appeared almost a year earlier in the MoS. David says:
"In these cir*cum*stances, it is dif*fi*cult to see how any*one could believe that our over*sight arrange*ments work. Indeed, the act of impris*on*ing an indi*vidual who uses a legal route to report ter*ror*ism on the part of MI6, is hardly likely to encour*age other indi*vidu*als to use the sys*tem. It has all the hall*marks of des*pot*ism and tyranny."
The next day, 1 August 1998, the French DST, the equi*val*ent of MI5 and Spe*cial Branch, arres*ted David in the foyer of our hotel when he returned from watch*ing his foot*ball team, Middles*brough, lose 10 on Sky to Empoli in a pre-season friendly. He was held for over 24 hours in the Pal*ais de Justice most of the time in sol*it*ary and denied access to a law*yer. The day after, he was trans*ferred to La Santé prison in Paris's 14[SUP]th[/SUP] arron*disse*ment. At the instig*a*tion of the Brit*ish author*it*ies, he was held under dra*conian secrecy legis*la*tion and first saw a law*yer over two days after he had been arres*ted. He con*tin*ued to be denied access to all other vis*it*ors for most of his time in prison.
But for David's quick think*ing, I would not have known what had happened to him. He would have van*ished. The DST asked him for his papers. Know*ing I was wait*ing for his return in our hotel room, he told them his pass*port was in his bag upstairs (it was not). I there*fore only knew he had been arres*ted when the DST came knock*ing on my door. I was not to see him again for over two months.
Two days after David was arres*ted, The Daily Tele*graph splashed on dis*clos*ures he had given to its intel*li*gence cor*res*pond*ent Michael Smith, a few weeks before, about secur*ity blun*ders con*cern*ing the IRA main*land bomb*ing cam*paign. The Tele*graph included some details of the fail*ures but was blocked by the injunc*tion from reveal*ing how a num*ber of attacks could have been pre*ven*ted. Rather curi*ously, the paper then edited by Charles Moore called for David to be horse*whipped' in its leader column for provid*ing inform*a*tion about secur*ity fail*ures, which The Tele*graph pub*lished in its news section.
David's soli*citor John Wadham said:
"It's a strange coin*cid*ence that before this import*ant story about this assas*sin*a*tion attempt was going to break, the Gov*ern*ment ensured that David was arres*ted and incommunicado."
The New York Times breaks the story
While David lan*guished in a prison cell, and while the dis*clos*ure had been injunc*ted in the Brit*ish press, a public-spirited indi*vidual passed the details of the MI6/Al Qaeda con*spir*acy to The New York Times. On 5 August 1998, it repor*ted that the Brit*ish media had been banned from report*ing the plot.
Did the Brit*ish gov*ern*ment try to assas*sin*ate Col Mum*mar Gad*dafi, the Libyan leader, in Feb*ru*ary 1996 by plant*ing a bomb under his motor*cade? And did the plan go awry because agents from MI6, the for*eign intel*li*gence ser*vice, put the bomb under the wrong car, killing sev*eral Libyan bystand*ers?" it asked. […]
"A sweep*ing injunc*tion has barred news*pa*pers and tele*vi*sion news pro*grammes from pub*lish*ing the embar*rass*ing alleg*a*tions about the inner work*ings of Britain's secur*ity ser*vices, brought up by a dis*gruntled former officer. The media have been forced to dis*cuss the alleg*a*tions without actu*ally say*ing what the alleg*a*tions are. I've known these things for some*thing like 16 months, and I am not allowed to pub*lish any of it,' said Jonathan Hol*borow, editor of The Mail on Sunday."
The paper added that the gov*ern*ment had told the press it could report the alleg*a*tions as long as it did not men*tion details, like the pay*ment to Islamic extrem*ists of around £100,000.
The Pan*or*ama programme
The BBC began intense nego*ti*ations with the gov*ern*ment for per*mis*sion to show David's inter*view with Mark Urban. Only after threat*en*ing to chal*lenge the tem*por*ary injunc*tion through the courts, did the gov*ern*ment back down. Two days after the pub*lic*a*tion of The New York Times art*icle, the BBC was per*mit*ted to broad*cast more details of the con*spir*acy in a Pan*or*ama spe*cial presen*ted by Mark Urban. He con*firmed that the Islamic group involved was the Mil*it*ant (or Fight*ing) Islamic Group, led by Abdul*lah Al-Sadiq. Cam*ille Tawil, an Arab journ*al*ist based in Lon*don, told the pro*gramme that shortly after the attack in Feb*ru*ary 1996, he received a fax from the group, claim*ing respons*ib*il*ity for the attack and nam*ing the mem*bers of its team who had died in the attack:
"I felt it was cred*ible inform*a*tion given to me but I wanted to verify the story. I con*tac*ted other Libyan groups and they gave me a sim*ilar account of what had happened. This is why I decided to pub*lish the story."
Pan*or*ama also reported:
"Libya has pub*licly accused Bri*tain of giv*ing refuge to the leader of the Mil*it*ant Islamic Group. In response to our enquiry, the For*eign Office said it does not know whether Abdul*lah Al Sadiq is in this country".
The pro*gramme also con*firmed that MI6 did not get the vital per*mis*sion from its min*is*ters to carry out the attack which is a legal require*ment so the officers involved have immunity under Eng*lish law.
"Two well-placed people have told me that the Tory min*is*ters run*ning the depart*ment at the time gave no such author*isa*tion. […] In short, that means Britain's intel*li*gence ser*vice was oper*at*ing com*pletely out of control."
Urban con*cluded:
"It is true of course that Shayler's know*ledge of this affair depends entirely on what the SIS man, PT16/B, told him at their meet*ings. But cer*tain pieces of this Libyan jig*saw can*not eas*ily be argued away by SIS. There was an assas*sin*a*tion attempt. Numer*ous Libyan sources con*firm it. Bri*tain did have a rela*tion*ship with Tun*worth. Any inquiry into David Shayler's alleg*a*tion will be able to find the key CX report which detailed the plot against Gad*dafi, so show*ing Tunworth's inside knowledge. […]
"Only a thor*ough going inquiry would stand a chance of get*ting to the bot*tom of whether some intel*li*gence officers played fast and loose with the rules. David Shayler has provided Pan*or*ama with other details about the Libyan oper*a*tion and the people con*nec*ted with it. Com*bined with our own inform*a*tion, it sug*gests that SIS have a very ser*i*ous case to answer".
The Pan*or*ama pro*gramme estab*lished that MI6 had oper*ated out*side the con*trol of its polit*ical mas*ters. In other words, unac*count*able intel*li*gence oper*at*ives were decid*ing Brit*ish for*eign policy, not a demo*crat*ic*ally elec*ted gov*ern*ment. When you think about it, this means that middle rank*ing intel*li*gence officers have the power of life and death over an indi*vidual without being account*able for their actions16. While that is all very well in a James Bond film, in the real world intel*li*gence officers are now required to oper*ate within the law.
Sep*ar*ate sources con*firm the story
On 9 August 1998, the MoS added still fur*ther con*firm*a*tion of the plot and the pay*ments. It reported:
"David Shayler's rev*el*a*tions that MI6 tried to blow up Col*onel Gad*dafi were given strong cre*dence by US intel*li*gence sources yes*ter*day. They insisted that, des*pite claims to the con*trary, the Brit*ish secret ser*vice was fin*an*cing the group behind the attempt on the Libyan leader's life. [Accord*ing to the US] the Brit*ish ser*vice [MI6] turned to the Fight*ing Islamic Group [FIG] and its leader, Abu Abdul*lah Sadiq, who was liv*ing in London."
A sep*ar*ate source, a former senior ana*lyst with Amer*ican intel*li*gence, told the paper:
"I'm sure that Brit*ish intel*li*gence has all the plaus*ible deni*ab*il*ity that it needs. Cer*tainly there were con*tacts between MI6 and FIG."
Yet another source in Wash*ing*ton told the paper that MI6 had provided vari*ous kinds of sup*port' to FIG, includ*ing fin*an*cial help.
The same day, The Sunday Times repor*ted that it had iden*ti*fied one of the per*pet*rat*ors of the attack as Abd Al Muhay*meen. Accord*ing to the paper, he was a Libyan fun*da*ment*al*ist' or Islamic extrem*ist, to use MI5 phras*eo*logy, who had trained and fought in Afgh*anistan. On the day, he also chose the tim*ing of the attack.
"He waited in ambush with a group of feday*deen from a force known as the Islamic Fight*ing Group. […] The group appeared to be gain*ing in strength and dar*ing, mostly due to the expert*ise of Afghan vet*er*ans such as Al Muhay*meen. […] As the con*voy approached, Al Muhay*meeen gave the word and the sounds of battle erup*ted. When it was over, Gad*dafi had sur*vived yet again. So had Al Muhay*meen. But sev*eral of their men lay dead on each side. So did bystanders."
For*eign Secretary's comments
On 9 August 1998, Robin Cook, the then For*eign Sec*ret*ary, told the BBC's Break*fast with Frost programme:
"The tale about the MI6 plot to assas*sin*ate Gad*dafi is pure fantasy. First of all, let's be clear about this claim that Shayler can bring down the gov*ern*ment, [the claim appeared in The Sunday Times, but David never made it] the alleg*a*tions are about some*thing that is alleged to have happened not under this gov*ern*ment but under our pre*de*cessor. […] I have pur*sued these alleg*a*tions. I am abso*lutely sat*is*fied that the pre*vi*ous For*eign Sec*ret*ary did not author*ise any such assas*sin*a*tion attempt. I am per*fectly sat*is*fied that SIS never put for*ward any such pro*posal for an assas*sin*a*tion attempt, nor have I seen any*thing in the 15 months I have been in the job which would sug*gest that SIS has any interest, any role or any exper*i*ence over the recent dec*ade of any such escapade. It is pure fantasy.
"I have already made my own enquir*ies. I have sat*is*fied my mind. I see no basis for the reports in today's papers about any forth*com*ing enquiry. There was no SIS pro*posal to do it and I am fairly clear that there has never been any SIS involve*ment. I do wish people would recog*nise that what is being said here is that there is some*body who has left another ser*vice, not SIS, was never in SIS, is mak*ing alleg*a*tions no doubt for his own reas*ons. We would like to see him back in Bri*tain in order that we can pur*sue those charges that have been made against him.
"I am clear these alleg*a*tions have no basis in fact and secondly I am quite clear that the SIS oper*a*tions that I have author*ised have noth*ing remotely to do with the kind of fantasy that has been pro*duced over the last two days."
Without ever both*er*ing to take David's evid*ence, Cook repeated from The Sunday Times an alleg*a*tion that David had never made: that he could bring down the government'17, a tac*tic that Straw had used in the first use of the sub*mis*sion pro*cess in Octo*ber 1997.
Cook also unequi*voc*ally denied the exist*ence of any MI6 oper*a*tion at all; "The tale about the MI6 plot to assas*sin*ate Col*onel Gad*dafi is pure fantasy." There is no men*tion here that Cook is claim*ing that aspects of the story may be fantasy such as the pay*ments, which the For*eign and Com*mon*wealth Office (FCO) later and wrongly claimed were the sub*ject of the pure fantasy' jibe.
Without both*er*ing to hold a proper enquiry, he was uncrit*ic*ally put*ting out the MI6 line, adding: "I am clear these alleg*a*tions have no basis in fact." Min*is*ters can*not leg*ally ban inform*a*tion that is fantasy. After all, min*is*ters had already indic*ated in off-the-record brief*ings at the time of the Israeli Embassy dis*clos*ure that dis*clos*ures on the part of former officers, which they accept to be untrue, could not harm national security.
Indeed, when Cook said: "I am abso*lutely sat*is*fied that the pre*vi*ous For*eign Sec*ret*ary did not author*ise any such assas*sin*a*tion attempt", he merely con*firmed a key aspect of the Pan*or*ama invest*ig*a*tion; that MI6 did not have the per*mis*sion of min*is*ters to carry out the attack, mak*ing any actions by MI6 a crim*inal offence. Although Cook then claimed he was fairly clear' that there had never been any MI6 involve*ment and per*fectly clear' there was no basis in fact, he did not relate how exactly he had estab*lished this or why he was per*fectly clear' of one pos*i*tion but only fairly clear' about another.
Des*pite his claims, he obvi*ously hadn't had time to organ*ise and carry out a full inquiry, even though there were officers in MI5 who had been briefed about the plot, and who could have been inter*viewed. In fact, it appears that Cook in the same way that Straw had done before him went to the head of the agency con*cerned (in this case, MI6) and asked if it had been involved in ter*ror*ist fund*ing and murder. Not sur*pris*ingly, the lat*ter appears to have denied it.
After the Pan*or*ama pro*gramme was shown, Mark Urban offered his evid*ence to Robin Cook, who refused to take pos*ses*sion of it, inform*ing him that the mat*ter was closed. As this was an alleg*a*tion of murder and ter*ror*ist fund*ing, Cook should have dis*charged his legal duty and imme*di*ately referred the mat*ter to the police to investigate.
Libya con*firms plot
On Wed*nes*day 25 Novem*ber 1998, Libyan TV broad*cast foot*age of the assas*sin*a*tion attempt. It showed Gad*dafi lean*ing out of his open-topped car to greet the crowds, then ming*ling with the crowd, then it showed an object fly*ing through the air, Gad*dafi look*ing down, then sud*denly being sur*roun*ded by body*guards, who hustled him away. The TV zoomed in on the face of a man in the crowd, and his face was circled in red. Libyan TV named the assail*ant as Abdul*lah Rad*wan, a part*ner of Abu Abdul*lah Sadiq, the leader of the Islamic Fight*ing Group. Accord*ing to the report:
"Abdul*lah Rad*wan suc*ceeded in reach*ing the front ranks and threw a gren*ade when the brother leader left the car."
Libyan TV then showed an inter*view with Hasan Al Sadiq Al Shahh, an alleged accom*plice of Radwan:
Ques*tioner: Who entrus*ted you with the mis*sion of enter*ing the Jamahir*iya [the People's Repub*lic of Libya]?
Al Shahh: Abu Abdul*lah Al Sadiq.
Q: Did he give money?
A: Yes
Q: How much money?
A: $20,000
Q: $20,000?
A: Yes
Q: What is the total amount of money you obtained from Abu Abdul*lah Al Sadiq?
A: Per*haps, $40,000 or $41,000
Q: $41,000?
A: Approx*im*ately, yes
Q: Where did the money you got come from?
A: I do not know. But there is a group in those coun*tries
Q: What coun*tries are these?
A: Bri*tain

Redac*ted text on orders of MI5

Our recent enquir*ies with Swal*low Tail, a former intel*li*gence officer who can*not be named for fear of reprisals20, have con*firmed that the man caught by the Liby*ans in the attack, was the agent Tun*worth. This is fur*ther con*firm*a*tion that an MI6 agent, whom we know was work*ing to Wat*son in Lon*don, was involved in the plot. The officer also con*firmed that was either killed dur*ing the attack that Feb*ru*ary or shortly after. This rather under*mines the claims of min*is*ters that they banned the story in order to pro*tect national secur*ity, since the agent was clearly no longer at risk of reprisal and was not then provid*ing intel*li*gence to the Brit*ish services.
Other than using the sub*mis*sion pro*cess to inform the PM about ser*vice abuses of power, David also wrote to min*is*ters Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Robin Cook, John Prescott and the Attor*ney Gen*eral on sev*eral occa*sions, ask*ing them to invest*ig*ate his dis*clos*ures of MI6's fund*ing of Al Qaeda. At no point did any min*is*ter hear his evid*ence. In June 1999, David sent min*is*ters Secrets and Lies, a doc*u*ment he had pre*pared on his case to counter the mis*in*form*a*tion put out by gov*ern*ment. It provided details of the con*spir*acy but min*is*ters still refused to call in the police or hold any kind of enquiry. And that would have been that, if it hadn't been for the public-spirited former intel*li*gence officer who obtained the CX doc*u*ment issued by MI6 in Decem*ber 1995, and put it on the Inter*net. That officer said:
"I've just about had it up to here with the lies of min*is*ters. It is dif*fi*cult to ima*gine a more ser*i*ous abuse of power than MI6 fund*ing our ter*ror*ist enemies with the res*ult that inno*cent people are murdered in cold-blood. If there had been a legal way of present*ing that doc*u*ment to inde*pend*ent invest*ig*at*ors, I would have used it. As there was not, I had to resort to the Inter*net. Thank God for mod*ern technology."
The MI6/Al Qaeda con*spir*acy, Part 3
In Feb*ru*ary 2000, The Sunday Times provided cor*rob*or*a*tion that MI6 had con*spired with an agent in a plan to assas*sin*ate Col*onel Gad*dafi, when it repor*ted that a leaked MI6 doc*u*ment, CX95/ 53452 had appeared on the web*site www​.geo​cit​ies​.com/​b​y​a​n​y​m​e​a​n​s​n​e​c​e​s​s​a​r​y​2​000. When inter*viewed about the doc*u*ment, the then For*eign Sec*ret*ary Robin Cook refused to con*firm that it was genu*ine. David can though con*firm that it is the doc*u*ment sent by MI6's R/ME/C to White*hall depart*ments and the intel*li*gence ser*vices in Decem*ber 1995. It refuted Cook's claims, which had caused many to believe that David had simply made the whole thing up:
"The tale about the MI6 plot to assas*sin*ate Gad*dafi is pure fantasy.
"It is pure fantasy"
"I am clear these alleg*a*tions have no basis in fact"
The MI6 report clearly demon*strated that an MI6 agent among the coup plot*ters was meet*ing his MI6 hand*ler to dis*cuss the assas*sin*a*tion of Col Gad*dafi in which he was involved':
"The coup plot*ters would launch a dir*ect attack on Gad*dafi and would either arrest him or kill him."
"The mil*it*ary officer said that the plot*ters would have cars sim*ilar to those in Gaddafi's secur*ity entour*age with fake secur*ity num*ber plates. They would infilt*rate them*selves into the entour*age in order to kill or arrest Gaddafi."
Remem*ber, Tun*worth had already out*lined his plans and his request for fin*ance to the res*id*ent MI6 officer in Tunis in sum*mer 1995. David Wat*son, PT16/B, had then met Tun*worth in the full know*ledge that the lat*ter wanted to assas*sin*ate Gad*dafi to obtain details of the oper*a*tion, which were pub*lished in the CX report. If this report had been a record of a meet*ing between a Libyan ter*ror*ist and an IRA mem*ber plan*ning to assas*sin*ate Tony Blair, which had fallen into MI5 or police hands, it would have been accep*ted in a court of law as clear evid*ence of a con*spir*acy between the two to cause terrorism.
The MI6 intel*li*gence report also con*firmed that Sirte was the site of the attack in Feb*ru*ary or March 1996, inform*a*tion David had told Urban who had stood it up for the Pan*or*ama invest*ig*a*tion into the plot. It also estab*lished that the group of coup plot*ters were at least look*ing for sup*port from the Brit*ish state. (As a CX report going out to min*is*ters, it could not detail the illegal payments):
"The officer was dis*clos*ing this inform*a*tion in the hope that if the coup was suc*cess*ful, the new gov*ern*ment could enlist HMG support."
Accord*ing to the report, Tun*worth also admit*ted con*tacts between the plot*ters and Islamic extrem*ists, described as Libyan stu*dents' and Libyan vet*er*ans who served in Afgh*anistan'. As already dis*cussed, vet*eran Libyan Islamic extrem*ists who served in Afgh*anistan are con*sidered by MI5 to be de facto mem*bers of Al Qaeda.
The CX report oth*er*wise played down the agent's con*tacts with Islamic extrem*ists, pre*sum*ably because the report went to min*is*ters who would have been appalled at the pro*spect of Islamic ter*ror*ists top*pling Gad*dafi, given that the former posed a greater threat to Brit*ish lives. As we now know from the sexed-up dossier, it is not unusual for incon*veni*ent pieces of inform*a*tion to be left out of offi*cial reports.
David is adam*ant that, when Wat*son was brief*ing him, he told David that Tun*worth was lead*ing a rag tag' group of Islamic extrem*ists. David also briefed Paul Slim, his boss at the time, with this inform*a*tion and provided it in his sworn state*ment to the police. He has not been charged with per*jury. Other media reports already quoted have estab*lished that the Islamic Fight*ing Group were respons*ible. The Libyan TV broad*cast also indic*ated that a lead*ing mem*ber of the IFG might be Tun*worth, as he led the attack in much the way that Tun*worth out*lined in the CX report.
The report also made it abso*lutely clear that the Per*man*ent Under Secretary's Depart*ment Sir Humphrey Appleby's equi*val*ent in the For*eign Office GCHQ, MI5; the Min*istry of Defence; and MI6 sta*tions in Tunis, Cairo and Wash*ing*ton knew of the assas*sin*a*tion attempt at least two months in advance. They would there*fore have had cop*ies on file. Did none of them bother to brief Cook with this rather per*tin*ent inform*a*tion before he went on the Break*fast with Frost pro*gramme on 9 August 1998? Were our Sir Humphreys and our George Smi*leys delib*er*ately keep*ing min*is*ters in the dark? Or did Cook know about Tun*worth but think he could get away with brand*ing the plot pure fantasy' in the belief that doc*u*ments detail*ing the rela*tion*ship between Tun*worth and MI6 would never see the light of day?
We also have to ask ourselves what role the PM played in all this, as the fig*ure ulti*mately respons*ible for our ser*vices. What did he know and when did he know it?
Julie Ann and the bul*lies in government
The gov*ern*ment had always claimed it was not in the busi*ness of pre*vent*ing legit*im*ate dis*cus*sion of the intel*li*gence ser*vices. But on 6 March 2000, that all changed when Spe*cial Branch officers arres*ted Julie Ann Dav*ies, a stu*dent at King*ston Uni*ver*sity, under the 1911 and 1989 OSAs, dur*ing a lec*ture at the col*lege. She was held for sev*eral hours at King*ston Police sta*tion but was not charged. She was later released on police bail. The uni*ver*sity con*firmed that it had com*plied with a search war*rant, giv*ing police the right to access Davies's com*puter at the uni*ver*sity. Dav*ies had recently vis*ited David in France and had begun to rally sup*port for him.
"Dur*ing that meet*ing I became con*vinced that the man was genu*ine and so I felt the need to do some*thing about his situ*ation," she said at the time.
The day after the CX doc*u*ment appeared on the Inter*net, Dav*ies cir*cu*lated an e-mail to fel*low cam*paign*ers and journ*al*ists. In it, she stated:
"You have prob*ably heard about the doc*u*ment on the web that appears to back up David Shayler's alleg*a*tions of an MI6 plot to assas*sin*ate Col*onel Gaddafi."
It is also clear from the con*text of the ques*tions that police asked her that Spe*cial Branch sus*pec*ted her of put*ting the CX doc*u*ment on the Inter*net. Under ques*tion*ing, Dav*ies denied hav*ing any*thing to do with this. After keep*ing her on police bail for a num*ber of months without char*ging her, Spe*cial Branch even*tu*ally dropped the invest*ig*a*tion. As a res*ult of the police action, she was forced to drop out of her uni*ver*sity course. She is cur*rently suing police for wrong*ful arrest. As a res*ult of dis*clos*ure in this case, police have provided her with the evid*ence' which led to her arrest. It con*sists only of three anonym*ous let*ters claim*ing that she put the doc*u*ment on the Inter*net. As they are anonym*ous, they would not be con*sidered admiss*ible evid*ence in a court of law.
Mr Peter Scott, King*ston Uni*ver*sity vice chan*cel*lor, said:
"The uni*ver*sity, as an insti*tu*tion com*mit*ted to free*dom of expres*sion, would be par*tic*u*larly con*cerned if it turned out that a dis*cred*ited piece of legis*la*tion like the OSA was being used to sup*press legit*im*ate journ*al*istic invest*ig*a*tion and the public's right to know about alleged abuses by the secur*ity services."
The arrest of Julie Ann Dav*ies proved once again that min*is*ters were rather more con*cerned with intim*id*at*ing David's sup*port*ers and pro*tect*ing the intel*li*gence ser*vices from proper scru*tiny, includ*ing crim*inal invest*ig*a*tion, than free speech, one of the corner*stones of demo*cracy. It was also a clear example of bul*ly*ing. The Sunday Times, which had pub*lished the ori*ginal art*icle about the report and quoted from the doc*u*ment, had not been invest*ig*ated, nor had any of its journ*al*ists been arres*ted in con*nec*tion with the mat*ter.
This is also clear evid*ence that mater*ial from CX reports can be pub*lished without caus*ing dam*age to national secur*ity, as the gov*ern*ment did not pro*sec*ute the paper or its journ*al*ists under s5 of the 1989 OSA, where the Crown has to prove dam*age, for pub*lish*ing and quot*ing from the report. But the bul*ly*ing was set to continue.
The Observer taken to court
Hav*ing used the OSA to intim*id*ate one of David's sup*port*ers for try*ing to expose ter*ror*ism fun*ded out by MI6, Blair's gov*ern*ment then turned its sights on the ele*ments of the press who were bravely try*ing to expose the con*spir*acy. Comedian and journ*al*ist Mark Thomas had agreed to deliver his evid*ence about the conspiracy23 to the Brit*ish Embassy by hand in Novem*ber 1999. As Straw did not even bother to reply, David briefed Mar*tin Bright of The Observer. In Feb*ru*ary 2000, he repor*ted that Straw had done noth*ing to ensure that there was a crim*inal invest*ig*a*tion into PT16/B's activities.
The art*icle also revealed for the first time in pub*lic that Tun*worth was a senior mem*ber of Libyan intel*li*gence, who had walked into the Brit*ish Embassy in Tunis, and that reports quot*ing Moroc*can and Egyp*tian intel*li*gence sources had con*firmed the assas*sin*a*tion attempt, shortly after it took place in Feb*ru*ary 1996.
A For*eign Office spokes*man changed the offi*cial pos*i*tion on the con*spir*acy, try*ing to play down Robin Cook's claim that the tale about the MI6 plot to assas*sin*ate Gad*dafi was pure fantasy':
"We have never denied know*ledge of coup attempts against Col Gad*dafi," he told the paper. "We always described alleg*a*tions of involve*ment as fantasy25. We have noth*ing to add or subtract".
If the For*eign Office and Cook had been hon*est when the dis*clos*ure was first made, they would have said at the time:
"We are aware of a con*spir*acy to assas*sin*ate Col*onel Gad*dafi in early 1996. We are still mak*ing enquir*ies about any MI6 involvement."
Tun*worth was after all an MI6 agent who had by the time of the attack met David Wat*son, an MI6 officer, at least twice to dis*cuss his plans. On that evid*ence alone, we can con*clude that MI6 was involved. How*ever, Tun*worth could not have gone ahead with the plot without the back*ing of MI6, fin*an*cial or oth*er*wise. As we have seen, sep*ar*ate sources have con*firmed pay*ments were made to the IFG, the group Tun*worth belonged to.
On 14 March 2000, both The Observer and The Guard*ian were taken to court by the author*it*ies. Spe*cial Branch sought a court order to seize any note*books and browse through The Observer's com*puter for fur*ther evid*ence of breaches of the OSA on David's part. It sought from The Guard*ian the ori*ginal of a let*ter David had writ*ten, which was pub*lished in news*pa*per on the 17 Feb*ru*ary 2000. As Nick Cohen, The Observer's colum*nist put it:
"No one would dream of telling a news*pa*per about offi*cial cor*rup*tion, incom*pet*ence or crime, if they thought the police or in this case, the secret police might read every jot*ting and e-mail."
A couple of days later, Detect*ive Ser*geant John Flynn, from the fin*an*cial invest*ig*a*tions unit of Spe*cial Branch, told The Guard*ian that there were reas*on*able grounds' for pro*sec*ut*ing Mar*tin Bright and Roger Alton, the editor of The Observer, under s5 of the OSA.
A month later, judge Mar*tin Steph*ens ruled that the papers had to hand over any mater*ial, even though he admit*ted that the let*ter to The Guard*ian con*tained noth*ing that had not already been prin*ted. David said at the time:
"The gov*ern*ment is adopt*ing the tac*tics of a total*it*arian state by attack*ing the press in this way. If they really believe I have doc*u*ments that could dam*age national secur*ity, why don't they come and talk to me about them, rather than intim*id*ate journalists."
Even the then For*eign Sec*ret*ary Robin Cook and the For*eign Office min*is*ter Peter Hain were repor*ted to be hor*ri*fied at such an attack on press free*dom. But we have to won*der why they chose to speak out at this point. Did Cook know that if the doc*u*ments were handed over then David might be pro*sec*uted for dis*clos*ing details of the MI6/Al Qaeda con*spir*acy, allow*ing Cook's pure fantasy' lies to be examined before a court?
On 19 July 2000, Mr Justice Igor Judge heard the case for Spe*cial Branch to access The Observer's com*puter. He over*turned the decision of the lower courts in his ringing defence of press freedom:
"The Gad*dafi Plot is either true or it is false, and unless there are reas*ons of com*pel*ling national secur*ity, the pub*lic is entitled to know the facts, and as the eyes and ears of the pub*lic, journ*al*ists are entitled to invest*ig*ate and report the facts, dis*pas*sion*ately and fairly, without pre*judge*ment or selectivity […]
"If true, it is dif*fi*cult to over*es*tim*ate its enorm*ity: a con*spir*acy to murder the head of another state, res*ult*ing not in his death, but in the deaths of inno*cent people who were not its inten*ded tar*gets.[…] Again, if true, the cir*cum*stances in which such a plan was con*ceived and developed, and the iden*tity of those who were informed about and approved it, or turned a blind eye to it, and equally those who were delib*er*ately kept in ignor*ance, raise crit*ical pub*lic issues about the activ*it*ies of the secur*ity ser*vices and those respons*ible for them"
In the middle of all this, a new devel*op*ment neatly poin*ted to the impot*ence of the ser*vices and the inef*fect*ive*ness of cur*rent legis*la*tion in pro*tect*ing state secrets in the age of the Inter*net. Por*tuguese intel*li*gence expert Fre*derico Duarte pub*lished the names of David Wat*son and Richard Bart*lett, PT16/B and PT16 respect*ively in Tal & Qual, the Por*tuguese equi*val*ent of Private Eye. As the names were also avail*able on the Inter*net, they could be accessed from Bri*tain. As they were now in the pub*lic domain, they could be repeated in the Brit*ish media, although only the Cam*paign for Press and Broad*cast*ing Free*dom dared to actu*ally pub*lish the names of the two MI6 ter*ror*ists involved.
The delayed police investigation
In March 2000, John Wadham and I had hand-delivered a state*ment which David had pre*pared and indic*ated he was pre*pared to swear to under oath to the Met*ro*pol*itan Police Spe*cial Branch at New Scot*land Yard. The police then refused to invest*ig*ate the plot claim*ing that con*spir*acy to murder did not amount to a crime in Bri*tain. Again, this demon*strates what would have happened if David had viol*ated the 1989 OSA s1 and approached the Met dir*ectly with his dis*clos*ures in 1997.
Finally in Decem*ber 2000, two and a half years after David had made the ori*ginal dis*clos*ure, he was finally given per*mis*sion by the author*it*ies to give evid*ence to the police. DS Gerry Mackin*non and Detect*ive Supt Lewis Ben*jamin work*ing for SO1 of the Met, inter*viewed him and pre*pared a sworn state*ment, which he signed in early 2001. SO1 then under*took the first ever police invest*ig*a*tion into the activ*it*ies of MI6. You don't have to be a cynic to point out that by this time, MI6 had had plenty of time to des*troy or tamper with the evid*ence. David and I have every con*fid*ence that the police in this case did their job thor*oughly and pro*fes*sion*ally but by then, we believe, it was too late.
In Feb*ru*ary 2001, SO1 sent a report to the Crown Pro*sec*u*tion Ser*vice. Pro*sec*u*tion sources said the author*it*ies had decided there was a prima facie case, mer*it*ing fur*ther investigation29. In all, the enquir*ies took nine months. In Novem*ber 2001, the Met*ro*pol*itan Police con*firmed that the MI6/Al Qaeda con*spir*acy was not pure fantasy':
"As you know, the Met*ro*pol*itan Police Ser*vice under*took an assess*ment of the avail*able mater*ial and sub*mit*ted two reports to the Crown Pro*sec*u*tion Ser*vice, an interim report in Feb*ru*ary 2001 and a final report in Septem*ber 2001. The police enquiry has been extremely thor*ough, examin*ing all rel*ev*ant material."
This clearly con*firms that the police have gathered evid*ence rel*ev*ant mater*ial' about the MI6 con*spir*acy, which con*firm there is a basis in fact' for David's dis*clos*ures refut*ing Robin Cook asser*tion that: "The tale about the MI6 plot to assas*sin*ate Gad*dafi is pure fantasy. [with] no basis in fact". At the same time, neither the police nor the CPS sought to arrest David or bring charges for per*jury or wast*ing police time, indic*at*ing that detailed sworn state*ment was hon*est, reli*able and true. On these avail*able facts, any reas*on*able observer can only con*clude that Cook is lying and David telling the truth. In fact, we have chal*lenged Cook to sign a sworn state*ment say*ing that the MI6/Al Qaeda plot was pure fantasy [with] no basis in fact'.
The CPS did con*clude that there is not enough evid*ence to secure a con*vic*tion. But it took them two months to come to this decision after the nine-month invest*ig*a*tion. Even then, the CPS sought to mis*rep*res*ent the find*ings of the enquiry:
"Final advice from the Crown Pro*sec*u*tion Ser*vice has now been received, say*ing that the mater*ial does not sub*stan*ti*ate the alleg*a*tion made by David Shayler."
The work of the police and the Crown Pro*sec*u*tion Ser*vice is not to sub*stan*ti*ate […] alleg*a*tions' or oth*er*wise. (Any*way, David made a num*ber of alleg*a*tions, not just one). Its job is to judge whether there is enough evid*ence to secure a con*vic*tion in front of a jury bey*ond any reas*on*able doubt. That is a very high stand*ard of proof. The usual test of proof for Par*lia*ment*ary or judi*cial enquir*ies is the bal*ance of probabilities'.
At the time, David commented:
"This is the first time that the police have invest*ig*ated an alleg*a*tion against MI6, partly because MI6 had a de facto immunity from invest*ig*a*tion into alleg*a*tions of crime on the part of the ser*vice under the Royal Prerog*at*ive. It demon*strates why MI6 was put on a legal foot*ing in the 1994 Intel*li*gence Ser*vices Act. The invest*ig*a*tion was not of course ideal. The police were only look*ing to gather admiss*ible evid*ence, which could be used to secure a con*vic*tion of the two MI6 officers who planned and car*ried out the plot, rather than try*ing to assess all rel*ev*ant mater*ial, includ*ing intelligence."
This whole pro*cess once again calls into ques*tion the over*sight arrange*ments for the ser*vices and the abil*ity of min*is*ters and offi*cials to dis*charge their legal duties. In the future, we will be seek*ing per*mis*sion to have the record*ing on which David's sworn testi*mony was based pub*lished so that the Brit*ish people and, it is hoped, Par*lia*ment can see for them*selves the truth of his words.
Fur*ther con*firm*a*tion of the plot
That, again, might have been that but for a book pub*lished by two French journ*al*ists, shortly before David went to trial in Octo*ber 2002. Guil*laume Dasquié, pub*lisher of Intel*li*gence On-line, and Jean-Charles Bris*ard, a former adviser to French Pres*id*ent Jacques Chirac who worked for the French intel*li*gence ser*vices, pub*lished For*bid*den Truth. The book con*firms that the Islamic Fight*ing group was the Libyan Al Qaeda cell respons*ible for the attempt on Gaddafi's life. The book added that the Islamic Fight*ing Group also included Anas al-Liby, a lead*ing Al Qaeda mem*ber who is wanted for his involve*ment in the African embassy bomb*ings and remains on the US government's most wanted list with a reward of $25 mil*lion for his cap*ture. Al-Liby was with Osama bin Laden in Sudan before the Al Qaeda leader returned to Afgh*anistan in 199632. Dasquie said:
"Bin Laden wanted to settle in Libya in the early 1990s but was hindered by the gov*ern*ment of Muam*mar Gad*dafi. Enraged by Libya's refusal, bin Laden organ*ised attacks inside Libya, includ*ing assas*sin*a*tion attempts against Gaddafi.".
This provides yet more con*vin*cing evid*ence that Tun*worth was involved with Al Qaeda. At the very least, MI6 and MI5's under*stand*ing of Al Qaeda was so lim*ited that neither ser*vice real*ised the implic*a*tions of Tunworth's pro*posed coup in Libya: by assas*sin*at*ing Gad*dafi the West would have lost a valu*able ally in the battle with Al Qaeda and instead would have had to face the threat of an Al Qaeda in con*trol of Libyan oil.
Given the tim*ing of the MI6 pay*ments along with the close rela*tion*ship between the IFG and bin Laden it appears that Brit*ish tax*pay*ers' money was used to fund Al Qaeda attacks in Libya. Ashur Sha*mis, a Libyan expert on Islamic extrem*ism, also added sup*port to David's allegation:
"There was a rise in the activ*it*ies of the Islamic Fight*ing Group from 1995 [around the time of the first pay*ment]," he said, "but many in Libya would be shocked if MI6 was involved.".
Issues raised by the MI6/Al Qaeda conspiracy
Nearly all experts who work in counter-terrorism as opposed to people on the "out*side" believe that assas*sin*a*tions, par*tic*u*larly in the case of heads of state only serve to destabil*ise a region. This was a view held by the US National Secur*ity Coun*cil until George W Bush became pres*id*ent. Although cer*tain Third World lead*ers do not share our stand*ards of demo*cracy, they do provide a cer*tain amount of sta*bil*ity to their coun*try and region. Remove such a leader from power by assas*sin*a*tion and you will only cre*ate a vacuum, which will lead to unrest and viol*ence as fac*tions com*pete for power.
Under inter*na*tional law, assas*sin*a*tion oper*a*tions are illegal. The only moral argu*ment for assas*sin*at*ing any dic*tator or ter*ror*ist is that such action would lead to con*sid*er*ably fewer deaths, than leav*ing him in power to con*tinue to sup*port viol*ence against the West. By 1996, Gad*dafi had ceased to sup*port the IRA or indeed any ter*ror*ism. There were, though, a few uncon*firmed reports that he had provided funds to Palestinian res*ist*ance move*ments in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, ter*rit*or*ies illeg*ally occu*pied by Israel and sub*ject to UN res*ol*u*tions. In this con*text, Gad*dafi was fund*ing organ*isa*tions fight*ing for their own free*dom, not terrorists.
In addi*tion, MI6 had given its bless*ing to an indi*vidual who was lead*ing a group of Islamic extrem*ists with links to the Al Qaeda net*work. If Tun*worth, the indi*vidual the Liby*ans caught in the act, had suc*ceeded in assas*sin*at*ing Col*onel Gad*dafi, his sup*port*ers would in all prob*ab*il*ity have set up an Islamic Extrem*ist state in North Africa, fur*ther destabil*ising a region already sub*ject to viol*ence from Islamic fundamentalists.
Once Al Qaeda had Libya, it would have been all too easy for the group to take con*trol of neigh*bour*ing states like Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, which already have their own internal prob*lems with Al Qaeda. In con*trol of a state like Libya or a region like North Africa, Al Qaeda would have had:

• Ready access to Libyan funds, run*ning into £billions.
  
• Con*trol of the Libyan oil industry, destabil*ising world oil prices.
  
• The abil*ity to launch many more attacks like Septem*ber 11[SUP]th[/SUP], killing and maim*ing thou*sands of UK and US citizens.
  
• A land bor*der with Israel and there*fore a greatly increased capa*city to attack the state of Israel.
  
• The means to destabil*ise world secur*ity on an enorm*ous scale.
  

In fact, we only have to look at the cur*rent prob*lems in Iraq to see what could have happened, had the MI6/Al Qaeda con*spir*acy suc*cess*fully led to Gaddafi's assas*sin*a*tion. In the absence of West*ern mil*it*ary and secur*ity forces in a post-coup Libya, Al Qaeda would have had an even freer rein than it now has in post-war Iraq. At the very least, MI6 failed to real*ise the implic*a*tions of Tunworth's admit*ted asso*ci*ation with Islamic Extrem*ists or his inten*tions, a coup lead*ing to an Al Qaeda state in Libya. That in itself would be of enorm*ous con*cern, for which MI6 deserves to roundly be cen*sured. But, the truth is, the agent duped MI6 officers into fund*ing that poten*tial Al Qaeda takeover. David explains:
"This was an act of ter*ror*ism, in which Bri*tain became a state spon*sor of Islamic extrem*ism. To put this in con*text, the Pro*vi*sional IRA tries to avoid harm*ing civil*ians on the basis that it pro*duces bad pub*li*city (although inev*it*ably civil*ians are maimed and murdered when bombs go off on our streets). Islamic extrem*ists and Al Qaeda have no such restraint. MI6 con*sciously sup*por*ted ter*ror*ists who pose a greater threat to the national secur*ity of the UK than the Pro*vi*sional IRA ever did.
"Although my boss, Paul Slim did not seem to want to know, I made it clear to him that it was his respons*ib*il*ity to take it up the man*age*ment chain. This whole oper*a*tion was clearly a viol*a*tion of the rule of law that my recruiter had told me the ser*vices must observe.
"I could also clearly see that the rela*tion*ship between Tun*worth and MI6 was flawed. MI5 had no secur*ity record of Tun*worth and MI6 had only a couple of traces or brief men*tions. Yet less than six months later, after a hand*ful of meet*ings, MI6 had given him £100,000 of tax*pay*ers' money to assas*sin*ate a for*eign head of state. There was no way that MI6 could in that time have estab*lished a close enough rela*tion*ship with him to make any real*istic assess*ment of his char*ac*ter and reli*ab*il*ity he really could have been anybody."
If this sort of MI6 activ*ity only went on abroad and did not affect Brit*ish cit*izens, it might be less fright*en*ing for us. How*ever, MI6 routinely oper*ates in the UK. In addi*tion to IOPs35, UKG (now PT16B/OPS) ran agents in the UK and UKZ car*ries out surveillance.
If our elec*ted rep*res*ent*at*ives are not allowed to access MI6 doc*u*ments about the con*spir*acy then per*haps they should try using the US Free*dom of Inform*a*tion Act to obtain final con*firm*a*tion of MI6 fund*ing Tun*worth and the IFG and Al Qaeda.
Con*clu*sions
As David went on the record pre*cisely because of the MI6 fund*ing of Al Qaeda, it is worth look*ing at what he would have said in his defence in court, had he been allowed one:
Cover-up: There is over*whelm*ing evid*ence to indic*ate that the then For*eign Sec*ret*ary Robin Cook was eco*nom*ical with the truth'. His state*ment pro*tec*ted mur*der*ers in the intel*li*gence ser*vices and ensured that David was thrown in prison with a view to extra*di*tion. The media has been slow to put this to Cook and the head of Britain's intel*li*gence ser*vices, Prime Min*is*ter Tony Blair. Once the MI6 doc*u*ment appeared on the Inter*net and the police recovered rel*ev*ant mater*ial, it must have been clear to the Prime Min*is*ter that his For*eign Sec*ret*ary had not told the whole truth to the Brit*ish people. In that situ*ation, he had a simple choice under the min*is*terial code: either cor*rect the state*ment of his min*is*ter or enter into the. This is a cover up of monu*mental pro*por*tions. Its implic*a*tions for our demo*cracy and the rule of law are enormous.
Justice: Although the deaths of a few Liby*ans may not carry as much weight with news*pa*per edit*ors as the deaths of Brit*ish cit*izens, they are still somebody's sons and daugh*ters. They are human beings and not col*lat*

[Magda Hassan]

MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'

Startling revelations by French intelligence experts back David Shayler's alleged 'fantasy'about Gadaffi plot.

• Martin Bright, home affairs editor
  
  
• The Observer, Sunday 10 November 2002 12.48 AEST
  

British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya's fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden's trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the Government, which described similar claims by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler as 'pure fantasy'.
The allegations have emerged in the book Forbidden Truth , published in America by two French intelligence experts who reveal that the first Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden was issued by Libya in March 1998.
According to journalist Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard, an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac, British and US intelligence agencies buried the fact that the arrest warrant had come from Libya and played down the threat. Five months after the warrant was issued, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The arrest warrant was issued in connection with the murder in March 1994 of two German anti-terrorism agents, Silvan and Vera Becker, who were in charge of missions in Africa. According to the book, the resistance of Western intelligence agencies to the Libyan concerns can be explained by MI6's involvement with the al-Qaeda coup plot.
The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government's most wanted list with a reward of $25 million for his capture. He is wanted for his involvement in the African embassy bombings. Al-Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al-Qaeda leader returned to Afghanistan in 1996.
Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative, al-Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000 when he eluded a police raid on his house and fled abroad. The raid discovered a 180-page al-Qaeda 'manual for jihad' containing instructions for terrorist attacks.
The Observer has been restrained from printing details of the allegations during the course of the trial of David Shayler, who was last week sentenced to six months in prison for disclosing documents obtained during his time as an MI5 officer. He was not allowed to argue that he made the revelations in the public interest.
During his closing speech last week, Shayler repeated claims that he was gagged from talking about 'a crime so heinous' that he had no choice but to go to the press with his story. The 'crime' was the alleged MI6 involvement in the plot to assassinate Gadaffi, hatched in late 1995.
Shayler claims he was first briefed about the plot during formal meetings with colleagues from the foreign intelligence service MI6 when he was working on MI5's Libya desk in the mid-Nineties.
The Observer can today reveal that the MI6 officers involved in the alleged plot were Richard Bartlett, who has previously only been known under the codename PT16 and had overall responsibility for the operation; and David Watson, codename PT16B. As Shayler's opposite number in MI6, Watson was responsible for running a Libyan agent, 'Tunworth', who was was providing information from within the cell. According to Shayler, MI6 passed £100,000 to the al-Qaeda plotters.
The assassination attempt on Gadaffi was planned for early 1996 in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte. It is thought that an operation by the Islamic Fighting Group in the city was foiled in March 1996 and in the gun battle that followed several militants were killed. In 1998, the Libyans released TV footage of a 1996 grenade attack on Gadaffi that they claimed had been carried out by a British agent.
Shayler, who conducted his own defence in the trial, intended to call Bartlett and Watson as witnesses, but was prevented from doing so by the narrow focus of the court case.
During the Shayler trial, Home Secretary David Blunkett and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw signed Public Interest Immunity certificates to protect national security. Reporters were not able to report allegations about the Gadaffi plot during the course of the trial.
These restrictions have led to a row between the Attorney General and the so-called D-Notice Committee, which advises the press on national security issues.
The committee, officially known as the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee, has objected to demands by the prosecution to apply the Official Secrets Act retrospectively to cover information already pub lished or broadcast as a result of Shayler's disclosures. Members of the committee, who include senior national newspaper executives, are said to be horrified at the unprecedented attempt to censor the media during the trial.
Shayler claims Watson later boasted that there had been MI6 involvement in the Libyan operation. Shayler was also planning to call a witness to the conversation in which the MI6 man claimed British intelligence had been involved in the coup attempt.
According to Shayler, the woman, an Arabic translator at MI5, was also shocked by Watson's admission that money had been paid to the plotters.
Despite the James Bond myth, MI6 does not have a licence to kill and must gain direct authorisation from the Foreign Secretary for highly sensitive operations. Malcolm Rifkind, the Conservative Foreign Secretary at the time, has repeatedly said he gave no such authorisation.
It is believed Watson and Bartlett have been relocated and given new identities as a result of Shayler's revelations. MI6 is now said to be resigned to their names being made public and it is believed to have put further measures in place to ensure their safety.
A top-secret MI6 document leaked on the internet two years ago confirmed British intelligence knew of a plot in 1995, which involved five colonels, Libyan students and 'Libya veterans who served in Afghanistan'.
Ashur Shamis, a Libyan expert on radical Islam said: 'There was a rise in the activities of the Islamic Fighting Group from 1995, but many in Libya would be shocked if MI6 was involved.'
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002...vidshayler

[Magda Hassan]

Britain, Qadafi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group

17aug11

An extract from Secret Affairs on the British plot in the mid-1990s
While Bin Laden was drafting his declaration of jihad in early 1996, British intelligence was plotting with al-Qaida-associated terrorists in Libya to assassinate Colonel Qadafi. Qadafi had long challenged British interests and Western hegemony in the Middle East and Africa. The revolution that brought him to power in September 1969, recognised as popular' by British planners, overthrew the regime of eighty-year-old pro-British King Idriss, which provided a quarter of Britain's oil and was home to £100 million worth of British oil investment. The security of oil supplies must be our greatest concern', one Foreign Office official noted a year after the revolution. However, Qadafi set about removing long-standing US and British military bases, nationalising the oil import and distribution industries and demanding vastly increased revenues from the oil-producing companies. The regime later sealed its fate as a British and US bête noire by espousing an independent militant nationalism and sponsoring various anti-Western regimes, as well as terrorist groups such as the IRA.
Britain and the US have long been accused of involvement in plots to overthrow Qadafi. The most direct attempt was the US bombing of Libya in 1986, conducted ostensibly in response to Libyan sponsorship of a terrorist attack in Germany and believed to have targeted Qadafi personally, but instead killing his adopted daughter. Ten years later, another opportunity occurred when a Libyan military intelligence officer approached MI6 with a plan to overthrow Qadafi, according to former MI5 officer and whistle-blower David Shayler. The Libyan, codenamed Tunworth', proposed establishing links with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an organisation formed in Afghanistan in 1990 from around 500 Libyan jihadists then fighting the Soviet-backed government. One former senior member of the LIFG, Noman Benotman, who first went to Afghanistan as a twenty-two-year old in 1989, later said in an interview that during the Afghan War his mujahideen commander was Jalalludin Haqqani, and that he and fellow militants had benefited from British training programmes:
We trained in all types of guerrilla warfare. We trained on weapons, tactics, enemy engagement techniques and survival in hostile environments. All weapons training was with live ammunition, which was available everywhere. Indeed, there were a number of casualties during these training sessions. There were ex-military people amongst the Mujahideen, but no formal state forces participated. We were also trained by the elite units of the Mujahideen who had themselves been trained by Pakistani Special Forces, the CIA and the SAS … We had our own specially designed manuals, but we also made extensive use of manuals from the American and British military.'
After Afghanistan, the LIFG joined the armed struggle in Algeria, fighting alongside the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), with whom it had built up close relations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The British Home Office later noted that the LIFG's aim had been to overthrow the Qadafi regime and replace it with an Islamic state'. The US government later described the LIFG as an al-Qaeda affiliate known for engaging in terrorist activity in Libya and cooperating with al-Qaeda worldwide.' It shared the same aspirations and ideology as al-Qaida, although it never formally joined the organisation, having a more nationalistic stance and preferring to focus on the near enemy', i.e., the Qadafi regime. Shayler asserts that he was told by David Watson, an MI6 officer, that at Christmas 1995 he had supplied Tunworth with $40,000 to buy weapons to carry out the assassination plot and that similar sums were handed over at two further meetings. A secret MI6 cable dated December 1995 leaked in 2000 and published on the internet revealed MI6's knowledge of an attempt to overthrow Qadafi in a coup led by five Libyan colonels scheduled for February 1996. It provided a detailed schedule of events:
The coup was scheduled to start at around the time of the next General People's Congress on 14 February 1996. It would begin with attacks on a number of military and security installations including the military installation at Tarhuna. There would also be orchestrated unrest in Benghazi, Misratah and Tripoli. The coup plotters would launch a direct attack on Qadafi and would either arrest him or kill him … The plotters would have cars similar to those in Qadafi's security entourage with fake security number plates. They would infiltrate themselves into the entourage in order to kill or arrest Qadafi.
The cable also noted that one Libyan officer and twenty military personnel were being trained in the desert for their role in the attack, and that the plotters had already distributed 250 Webley pistols and 500 heavy machine guns among their sympathisers, who were said to number 1,275 people, including students, military personnel and teachers. Messages to these sympathisers were passed via schools and mosques' while the plotters also had some limited contact with the fundamentalists' who were a mix of Libya [sic] veterans who served in Afghanistan and Libyan students'. It continued:
The coup plotters expected to establish control of Libya at the end of March 1996. They would form an interim government before discussions with tribal leaders. The group would want rapprochement with the West. They hoped to divide the country into smaller areas, each with a governor and a democratically elected parliament. There would be a federal system of national government.'
The plot went ahead in February 1996 in Sirte, Qadafi's home city, but a bomb was detonated under the wrong car. Six innocent bystanders were killed, and Qadafi escaped unscathed. Shayler recollected how:
At a meeting shortly after, [David Watson] ventured to me in a note of triumph that Tunworth had been responsible for the attack. Yes, that was our man. We did it,' was how he put it. He regarded it, curiously, as a triumph even though the objective of the operation had not been met and reporting indicated that there had been civilian casualties. Despite that, I very much got the impression that this was regarded as a coup for MI6 because it was playing up the reputation that the real James Bonds wanted to have.'
Annie Machon, Shayler's partner and a former MI5 officer, writes that, by the time MI6 paid over the money to Tunworth, Osama Bin Laden's organisation was already known to be responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and MI5 had set up G9C, a section dedicated to the task of defeating Bin Laden and his affiliates'. This is significant in light of Britain's toleration of Bin Laden's London base the Advice and Reformation Committee which would not be closed down for another two and half years. US intelligence sources later told the Mail on Sunday newspaper that MI6 had indeed been behind the assassination plot and had turned to the LIFG's leader, Abu Abdullah Sadiq, who was living in London. The head of the assassination team was reported as being the Libya-based Abdal Muhaymeen, a veteran of the Afghan resistance and thus possibly trained by MI6 or the CIA. A spattering of other media investigations confirmed the plot, while a BBC film documentary broadcast in August 1998 was told that the Conservative government ministers then in charge of MI6 gave no authorisation for the operation and that it was solely the work of MI6 officers. All these reports contradicted the earlier claim by now Foreign Secretary Robin Cook that MI6 involvement in the plot was pure fantasy'. Equally, the government's denial of knowledge of the plot was decisively contradicted by the leaked cable, which showed that civil servants in the permanent secretary's department, GCHQ, MI5 and the MoD were all aware of the assassination attempt some two months before it was carried out. It is inconceivable that none of them would have informed their ministers. At the same time, Shayler was persistently hounded and prosecuted, the British elite's usual treatment meted out to insiders divulging information incriminating it.
As the LIFG stepped up its confrontation with the Libyan regime in 1995, it issued calls for Qadafi's overthrow. One communiqué, written in October 1995, around the time the organisation was plotting with MI6, described the Qadafi government as an apostate regime that has blasphemed against the faith of God Almighty', and declared that its overthrow was the foremost duty after faith in God'. These calls were mainly issued in London, where several prominent members of the LIFG were based after having been granted political asylum. American political analyst Gary Gambill, a former editor of the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, notes that Britain accepted the LIFG dissidents since British views of Qadafi were at fever pitch' over the regime's alleged involvement in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988; thus Britain allowed LIFG to develop a base of logistical support and fundraising on its soil.' While the Libyan regime complained that Britain was hosting nationals intent on overthrowing it, Whitehall continued to offer de facto protection to the LIFG. Indeed, it was only in October 2005, after the London bombings on 7/7, that the British government designated the LIFG a terrorist group. This was after Libya's rapprochement with Britain and the West that began in 2003.
One LIFG member was Anas al-Liby. A computer expert based in Sudan in the mid-1990s, al-Liby had moved there from Afghanistan, where he trained al-Qaida members in surveillance techniques. In 1993 al-Liby travelled to Nairobi and used the apartment of an al-Qaida member to develop surveillance pictures of the US embassy. This was the first step in the five-year plot that culminated in the embassy bombings of August 1998, following which al-Liby was indicted and became one of America's most wanted fugitives, with a $25 million reward for his capture or killing. In 1995 al-Liby came to Britain and applied for asylum. Soon after, the Egyptian authorities sent a detailed file on his terrorist credentials to Whitehall, including allegations of his involvement in a failed assassination attempt on President Mubarak in Addis Ababa in June 1995. But Cairo's request for his extradition was refused; British officials reportedly questioned whether he would get a fair trial and feared he could face the death penalty. Yet there is also the strong suspicion that the British security services were protecting al-Liby, along with the LIFG, given that MI6 was collaborating with it to kill Qadafi. Al-Liby was allowed to live in Manchester until May 2000, when his home was raided on orders from the Home Office, acting on a request from the US; copies of jihad training manuals were discovered, but al-Liby had already fled. Other members of the LIFG included Abu Hafs al-Libi, who reputedly lived in Dublin from 1996 until going to Iraq in 2004, where he served as one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's lieutenants in the al-Qaida group there until his death the same year; and Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a commander of Bin Laden's Khalden training camp in Afghanistan.
Significantly, it was the Qadafi regime that in March 1998 urged Interpol to issue the first arrest warrant for Bin Laden. It did so in response to the LIFG's presumed murder of a German intelligence officer, Silvan Becker, and his wife in Libya in March 1994, some eighteen months before Britain began collaborating with the group. Interpol then issued a red notice on Bin Laden and three of his Libyan associates. Yet, according to two French intelligence experts, Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard, the British and US intelligence agencies buried the arrest warrant and played down the threat due to MI6's involvement in the Libyan coup plot. This story was later reported in the Observer under the headline: MI6 "halted bid to arrest bin Laden"'. It was five months after the issuance of the arrest warrant that the US embassies in East Africa were bombed; perhaps if governments, including Britain's, had acted then, the bombings could have been averted.
The episode is interesting in that it shows how Britain's secret collusion with radical Islamists has directly undermined its ability to curb and prosecute them a leitmotif, in fact, of Britain's postwar foreign policy where Whitehall has often collaborated with the very groups to which it claims to be opposed. Indeed, the extent of this collaboration has been so extensive that many open public trials of the leading terrorist figures are likely to expose it, a fact which also applies to the Saudi, Pakistani and US governments. This partly explains London's and Washington's overt opposition to pursuing open legal processes for terrorist suspects and, most notably, Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, where suspected militants have been incarcerated and interrogated behind closed doors.
http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2011/08/...ing-group/

[Magda Hassan]

From the Jamestown Foundation but included anyway.

THE LIBYAN ISLAMIC FIGHTING GROUP (LIFG)By Gary Gambill
Colonel Muammar Qadhafi's decades-long confrontation with the West has never given him much purchase among militant Islamists in Libya. In fact, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah fi-Libya) has waged a violent insurgency for ten years with a hostility toward the eccentric dictator so implacable that it refuses even to negotiate with his envoys. Ironically, this internal challenge has led Qadhafi to abandon his quixotic defiance of the United States and join the Bush administration's war on terror, while the prospect of a LIFG takeover in Libya has facilitated American and European forgiveness of past transgressions. Prior to Qadhafi's seizure of power in 1969, Libya had long been ruled by the descendents of the 19th century Islamic revivalist leader Muhammad ibn al-Sanusi. Keenly aware that the endorsement of the Sanusi religious establishment was critical in the short run to his regime's legitimacy, Qadhafi consulted frequently with ulama (clergy) during his early years in power and granted them positions of influence in the legal and educational system. After consolidating his authority, however, he sidelined the ulama, seized control of their mosques, and nationalized their awqaf (religious endowments). Adding insult to injury, he propagated his own idiosyncratic version of the Islamic faith. [1] In a region where even slight deviations from religious orthodoxy are taboo, such tampering was nothing short of blasphemous. Those who objected to this heresy were brutally suppressed. Most notably, prominent Salafi preacher Muhammad al-Bashti (who could hardly be considered a radical) was tortured to death by Libyan security forces in 1981. So long as oil revenues remained plentiful, however, clerical angst did not inspire broad-based challenges to Qadhafi's rule. With the decline of oil prices in the 1980s, however, educated Libyans began to deeply resent the regime's heterodox religious orientation, conspicuous corruption and economic mismanagement. Adding fuel to the fire, Saudi Arabia stepped up its support for radical Wahhabi militants in the 1980s, nine of whom (including three army officers), were executed by the regime in 1987. As in other Arab states, government repression at home led many militant Libyan Islamists (estimated to be at least 500) to join the mujahideen fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Some returned to Libya in the early 1990s; others traveled to the Sudan, where Osama bin Laden had begun building what would become the al-Qaeda terrorist network, or took up residence in Britain.
These Libyan "Afghans" eschewed the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb al-Tahrir movements popular among the estranged ulama and began organizing their own network one that aimed not at restoring clerical privileges, but at overthrowing the Qadhafi regime altogether and establishing an Islamic state. Soaring unemployment, shortages of goods, and other economic ills stemming from the imposition of UN sanctions in 1992 made conditions in Libya ripe for an Islamist takeover. The emergence of this network also reflected regional trends. In Egypt and Algeria, Islamist militants were waging bloody insurgencies with support from Sudan. Although the prospect of a Sunni Islamist state in control of Libya's oil resources obviously appealed to Sudan's radical Islamist leader, Hassan Turabi, the dozens of Libyan Afghans who had congregated in bin Laden's camps were not allowed to organize an armed rebellion against Qadhafi mainly because there were nearly one million Sudanese workers in Libya, but also because Qadhafi had been allowing Algerian militants in Sudan to cross the Libyan desert into Algeria without interference. After an October 1993 rebellion by Libyan army units left hundreds dead, however, Turabi became convinced that Qadhafi's days were numbered and lifted these restrictions. Initial efforts by Libyan Afghans to mobilize armed resistance to Qadhafi fared poorly. Dozens of Islamist operatives were arrested by the security forces in 1994. Things began to change the following year, however, with a series of spectacular operations that appeared to indicate substantial Islamist penetration of the security establishment. In June, militants disguised as members of Qadhafi's Revolutionary Committees launched a daring operation to free a detained comrade from a hospital. Weeks later, they stormed a prison in the eastern port of Benghazi and released more of their compatriots. The regime launched a major arrest sweep, ostensibly against drug smugglers (Qadhafi was still loath to admit that he faced a domestic political challenge), and quickly ascertained that the militants were being supported financially and logistically by bin Laden's network in Sudan. Qadhafi demanded that the Sudanese government expel Libyan operatives from his camps and began ejecting thousands of Sudanese workers from the country. Under pressure from his hosts, bin Laden reluctantly informed his Libyan compatriots that they had to leave and gave them $2,400 each and plane tickets out of the country for their families. "Most of them, they refused the offer…they were very upset and angry," a Moroccan member of al-Qaeda later recalled. [2]
Meanwhile, fierce clashes between security forces and Islamist guerrillas erupted in Benghazi in September 1995, leaving dozens killed on both sides. After weeks of intense fighting, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) formally declared its existence in a communiqué calling Qadhafi's government "an apostate regime that has blasphemed against the faith of God Almighty" and declaring its overthrow to be "the foremost duty after faith in God." [3] This and future LIFG communiqués were issued by Libyan Afghans who had been granted political asylum in Britain (often after being rejected by continental European governments), where anti-Qadhafi sentiments stemming from the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, remained at a fever pitch. The involvement of the British government in the LIFG campaign against Qadhafi remains the subject of immense controversy. LIFG's next big operation, a failed attempt to assassinate Qadhafi in February 1996 that killed several of his bodyguards, was later said to have been financed by British intelligence to the tune of $160,000, according to ex-M15 officer David Shayler. [4] While Shayler's allegations have not been independently confirmed, it is clear that Britain allowed LIFG to develop a base of logistical support and fundraising on its soil. At any rate, financing by bin Laden appears to have been much more important. According to one report, LIFG received up to $50,000 from the Saudi terrorist mastermind for each of its militants killed on the battlefield. [5] The conflict continued to escalate in 1996. In March, several dozen Islamist detainees escaped from al-Kuwaifiya prison near Benghazi and fled into the mountains of northeastern Libya, where security forces in hot pursuit came under attack by LIFG guerrillas. As the fighting spread and intensified, the main coastal highway from Benghazi to the Egyptian border was closed for days. In June, LIFG fighters killed eight policemen at a training center near the town of Derna, east of Benghazi. In July, the government carried out massive arrest sweeps throughout the country and launched a major air and ground assault on LIFG mountain bases. Although LIFG forces were decimated, the security forces also suffered heavy losses, while the heavy traffic of air force jets to and from the front (easily perceptible to foreign diplomats in Tripoli) made it impossible for Qadhafi to credibly deny that he was facing a major revolt. In November, a LIFG operative hurled a grenade at Qadhafi during his visit to the desert town of Brak. Qadhafi escaped uninjured, but was said to have been hospitalized for severe shock. In light of evidence that LIFG had been tipped off as to the Libyan leader's itinerary, it is probably no coincidence that weeks later Qadhafi ordered the execution of eight officers who had led the failed 1993 army mutiny. Although LIFG attacks on military and police outposts continued intermittently over the next few
years, the government gradually gained the upper hand by imposing martial law on the Derna region and instituting a range of draconian measures (such as cutting electricity and water supplies to towns suspected of harboring LIFG militants) to intimidate its inhabitants into submission. Although this strategy damaged the government's legitimacy, it was very effective in undercutting LIFG's local support network. LIFG received a major blow in October 1997, when one of its most capable commanders, Salah Fathi bin Salman (a.k.a. Abu Abd al-Rahman Hattab), was killed in fighting with security forces. In the summer of 1998, the government launched a major assault on the group's remaining hideouts in the northeast and rounded up scores of alleged sympathizers throughout the country. By the end of the decade, LIFG operations in the country had slowed to a trickle. In a 1999 interview, LIFG spokesman Omar Rashed lamented that the Libyan people had not "passed beyond the stage of sentiments to the stage of action," and hinted at a shift in focus, as bin Laden had done, from regime change at home to international jihad. "The United States no longer relies on its agents to constrict the Islamic tide; it has taken this role upon itself," he said, in language reminiscent of al-Qaeda propaganda. [6] By this time, many operatives of LIFG (and a likeminded group, the Islamic Martyrs' Movement, also founded by Afghan veterans) had already chosen to follow the path of bin Laden, who relocated from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Former LIFG member Abu Anas al-Libi, for example, was a key planner of al-Qaeda's 1998 bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Another is Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (Al-Qaeda members frequently adopt a surname identifying their country of origin "al-Libi" is Arabic for "Libyan"), the former commander of bin Laden's Al-Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan. Abu-Hafs al-Libi (a.k.a. Abd-al-Hakim al-Jiritli) served as one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's chief lieutenants until his death in October 2004. Following 9/11, Qadhafi jumped at the opportunity to collaborate in the Bush administration's war on radical Islamist terrorism. Just weeks after the attacks, a CIA team flew to London to meet face to face with the man believed to have planned the 1988 Lockerbie bombing Musa Kusa, the head of Libyan intelligence. Kusa provided the CIA (and also Britain's M16 foreign intelligence service) with the names of LIFG operatives and other Libyan Islamists who trained in Afghanistan, as well as dossiers on LIFG leaders living in the UK. In light of the central role of Libyan Afghans in al-Qaeda, this was a major intelligence windfall for the Bush administration. The American government, for its part, officially designated LIFG as a terrorist organization. Although LIFG does not have a presence in the United States, the Bush administration's designation is not merely symbolic. For starters, it means that any state providing assistance to
LIFG can potentially be designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department. More importantly, it means that any member of LIFG living in undemocratic countries backed by the United States (e.g. Pakistan, Egypt) runs the risk of arrest and "rendition" back to Libya. That Britain has not designated LIFG a terrorist organization is significant, as several prominent leaders of the group continue to live in London and Manchester. All of them strongly deny any affiliation with al-Qaeda and are keen to emphasize that LIFG has never carried out an attack outside Libya or against civilians. [7] This may be technically true. One member of LIFG living in Britain was jailed for sixteen months without charge after he allegedly sent money to a suspected al-Qaeda member, but was eventually released because the government failed to present concrete evidence of criminal activity in court. According to the U.S. State Department, LIFG was "involved in planning and facilitating" the May 2003 bombings in Casablanca, but the suspects in this case were non-Libyan members of the Fighting Islamic Group in Morocco (FIGM). Although the two groups are almost certainly linked by more than ideological affinity, the U.S. government has never released information clarifying their relationship. Whether LIFG still constitutes a major threat to Qadhafi is unclear. Although LIFG guerrillas still maintain a modest presence in the mountains of northeastern Libya, intelligence cooperation with the United States has enabled the Libyan government to cut off their lines of logistical and financial support. Gary C. Gambill, a political analyst for Freedom House and adjunct professor at College of Mount Saint Vincent, has published widely on Lebanese and Syrian affairs. He is the former editor of Middle East Intelligence Bulletin. Notes: 1. The Islamic calendar was changed to start with the Prophet's birth (rather than his hijra to Mecca), for example, and the entire corpus of hadiths (traditions) of the prophet was discarded. 2. Trial testimony of L'Houssaine Kherchtou, United States v. bin Laden, Feb. 21, 2001 (transcript pp. 1280-1282). 3. Al-Hayat (London), 20 October 1995. 4. See "The Shayler affair: The spooks, the Colonel and the jailed whistle-blower," The Observer (London), 9 August 1998. Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie substantiate this claim in their 2001 book Ben Laden: La Verite interdite (Bin Ladin: The Forbidden Truth). 5. Al-Hayat (London), 7 September 1997.
6. Nida'ul Islam (http://www.islam.org.au), April - May 1999. 7. Al-Hayat (London), 2 March 2004.

[Magda Hassan]

The US government for years maintained that the kidnapped Guantanamo prisoners were trained using the 'Al Qaida Resistance Manual' also known as the Manchester Manual. And for years the US government maintained Abu Zubaydah had written the manual. It was found at the home of Abu Anas al Libi when it was raided on orders from the Home Office acting on a request from the US.

Article below from psychologist Jeff Kaye suggesting that the manual that was likely was part of a cover story originating with CIA/Special Operations officers, operating on orders from Cheney's office, and sent down through the JPRA command, who used Mitchell and Jessen, and possibly other outsourcing companies, for implementation of a new torture program.

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Experiment in Terror: The Psychological Evaluation of Abu Zubaydah and Its Role in Designing Torture

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[TD] By: Jeff Kaye Friday August 28, 2009 5:00 pm[/TD]
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In part one of this article, we looked at why the psychological report on Abu Zubaydah was ever written, and concluded, "It is clear the evaluation was written specifically to get permission for waterboarding, and not to undertake a serious psychological evaluation of the prisoner." In this second part, we look at when the report was likely written, and why the timing of it was consistent with the claim that the "evaluation" was really a pro forma performance for the sake of the lawyers. In addition, we will examine how some of the bogus claims about Zubaydah are linked to the cover story that brought about the torture program itself.
When Was the Evaluation Written?
The report was almost certainly written in July 2002, not long before it was passed to the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It likely was part of a packet of material used to present the "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," including waterboarding, as potentially "safe" to use.
There are plenty of indications in the report that Zubaydah had been under observation and interrogated (tortured) for some time prior to the drafting of the report (emphasis added).

Of particular note has been subject's ability to manage his mood and emotions during detention. [About four lines redacted] In addition, he showed strong signs of sympathetic nervous system arousal (possibly fear) when he experienced the initial "confrontational" dislocation of expectation during an interrogation session…. As has been observed during his recent detention, he was able to quickly bounce back from these most disconcerting moments and regain an air of calm confidence, and strong resolve in not parting with any other threat information.

By sympathetic nervous system arousal, the report's author means rapid breathing and heartbeat, dilated pupils, raised blood pressure, a spike in adrenaline, muscle tension, increased sweating noting "fear," possibly Zubaydah experienced a panic attack.
What could have brought about this "'confrontational' dislocation"? Most likely it was the appearance of James Mitchell and his SERE-style torture methods, replacing the early "rapport"-based interrogation of Ali Soufan and the FBI interrogation team. What Mitchell or whomever is saying here is that when things got rough, Zubaydah was temporarily shaken and "talked" more, subsequently regaining his "calm" and not producing more of what the torturers wanted.
Mitchell arrived in Thailand sometime in April 2002, and FBI interrogator Ali Soufan left in mid-May, in protest over the implementation of Mitchell's "learned helplessness" techniques. Already, Zubaydah had been subjected to forced nudity, sensory overload, shackling and sleep deprivation (and I'd guess, dietary manipulation, i.e., slow starvation), and perhaps other cruel treatment. (Soufan admitted that the FBI interrogation did not meet Geneva Common Article Three standards, either.) If my thesis is correct, the "dislocation" took place sometime before mid-May.
This appears to be corroborated by the fact that it was in mid-May, according to a narrative released by the Senate Intelligence Committee (H/T again to Marcy Wheeler) that the CIA first proposed ratcheting up the pressure on Zubaydah, including the use of the waterboard.

According to CIA records, because the CIA believed that Abu Zubaydah was withholding imminent threat information during the initial interrogation sessions, attorneys from the CIA's Office of General Counsel met with the Attorney General, the National Security Adviser, the Deputy National Security Adviser, the Legal Adviser to the National Security Council, and the Counsel to the President in mid-May 2002 to discuss the possible use of alternative interrogation methods that differed from the traditional methods used by the U.S. military and intelligence community. At this meeting, the CIA proposed particular alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding.

The frustration with Zubaydah who by mid-May had recovered from his "dislocation" experience (or conversely, had simply nothing more to say, or was already beyond reasonable functioning) places the portion of the psych evaluation narrative on this point a minimum of two months before the report was presumably written.
It also means the report could not have been written before mid-May. If the psychological evaluation was written to assess Abu Zubaydah's ability to handle interrogation, or to assess what types of interrogation techniques might be most effective, then it would have been written much earlier. It looks as if they were interested in running an experiment, trying out certain (SERE) techniques, irregardless of the actual psychological characteristics of the individual involved. That's why there was no earlier evaluation. The only purpose for this evaluation was CIA concern that they would not be caught doing something "illegal," i.e., to cover their asses.
Abu Zubaydah and the Al Qaeda Resistance Manual
The contradictions regarding the portrayal of Abu Zubaydah's life, noted in part one of this article, are most pronounced around his relationship to the vaunted "resistance" techniques of Al Qaeda fighters. The report retails alleged claims that Zubaydah actually wrote the manual. At another point, it states he is "familiar and probably well versed" in Al Qaeda resistance techniques (emphasis added). It's easy to forget today that Zubaydah was later proven to never have been an Al Qaeda or Taliban member, nor "privy to the information the government alleged he had provided" (H/T Gitcheegumee).
As Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the claims regarding Abu Zubaydah and the Al Qaeda manual coincide with the early stages of the torture program, when a Mitchell and Jessen review of said manual was used as a cover for the experiment of reverse-engineering SERE techniques into a physical torture program to use on supposed Al Qaeda prisoners.
As a recent article of mine pointed out, the ostensible Al Qaeda manual likely was part of a cover story originating with CIA/Special Operations officers, operating on orders from Cheney's office, and sent down through the JPRA command, who used Mitchell and Jessen, and possibly other outsourcing companies, for implementation of a new torture program. It didn't hurt that they all planned to make a lot of money in the process.
Once the torture program was well under way, the Al Qaeda manual meme faded away, and JPRA insinuated itself as the new, go-to agency for "war on terror" interrogators. In the end, a turf war ensued, with JPRA, Special Operations command, DIA and super-secret covert action arm, the Strategic Support Branch, on one side, and FBI, other existing intelligence groups (like the Naval Criminal Investigative Service) and, to a certain extent CIA, on the other. None of these groups really opposed all abusive interrogations (even the FBI had dirty hands), but were quick to criticize the ineffectiveness of the other group's protocols.
The conflict still continues today. The latest plan of the Obama administration, introduced by its Interrogation Task Force just last Monday, to create an omnibus group of interrogation professionals and place its center at the FBI, represents a partial defeat of sorts for those who placed their bets on the "learned helplessness" paradigm. But it does not represent the end of torture, only the return to the CIA-oriented program based on isolation, sensory deprivation/overload, sleep deprivation, and fear. The latter are enshrined in Appendix M of Army Field Manual 2-22.3, the new "golden standard" for U.S. interrogations.
Did Abu Zubaydah write the Al Qaeda resistance manual or not? Almost certainly not, but the report's own contradictions on this point are telling, as it points to carelessness in writing the report, as the product itself was not important, only its conclusion: Zubaydah should be waterboarded. The purpose of the report was to provide a guarantee because a psychological professional signed off on it! that it is "safe".

This so-called "evaluation" is obscene, unprofessional, and I'm ashamed that my profession, which has helped so many people, has been dragged into the worst sort of crimes and unethical, illegal behavior. I support the call of Physicians for Human Rights for Congress and the White House to convene a non-partisan commission to investigate the role of medical and psychological professionals in "the design, justification, supervision, and use" of the torture program, and to prosecute those involved.

http://firedoglake.com/2009/08/28/experi...g-torture/

[Magda Hassan]

The Libyan

9 December 2008

Anas Al-Liby is one of the best examples of someone who sits in the uncomfortable but very real crossover ground between international terrorists and the intelligence and security services we're told are fighting a war against them. He's a modern day Luis Posada Carriles or Vincenzo Vinciguerra. Born in 1964, he came to prominence in the early 1990s as he traveled around Africa with notorious triple agent Ali Mohamed. They were scouting out possible targets for Mohamed's associate Osama Bin Laden, and according to Peter Lance's book this is when they took recon photos of the African embassies that were later bombed.

Al-Liby then became involved with the LIFG, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. At that time they were essentially a domestic group focussed on getting rid of Gaddafi. Then came Al-Liby and the Secret Intelligence Service. According to hippy prophet and former MI5 officer David Shayler, it was around this time that an agent involved with the coup plotting against Gaddafi approached the British and wound up speaking to MI6. The British SIS then paid 100,000 to the LIFG to try to assassinate Gaddafi as part of the coup. This account is covered in detail in Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers, the book written by his partner Annie Machon. Sadly, Shayler has ruined any possibility of being taken seriously as a historical source due to his messianic indulgences of more recent years.
Fortunately there is a fair amount of other evidence that what Shayler said was true. Firstly, the government charged him under the Official Secrets Act, so at least some of his claims must have been true. Secondly, they attempted to hold the trial in secret. Then they imposed an injunction on newspapers looking to publish articles by Shayler or based on information he provided, though this was spectacularly flouted by Mohamed Al-Fayed's Punch magazine. If there was nothing to Shayler's allegations then no harm could have been done to national security, so there would have been no need for the secrecy.

Then there's the MI6 report, titled CX 95/53452, which shows that at the very least MI6 did have an agent codenamed Tunworth who was deeply involved in the coup plot, and that they knew who was plotting what ahead of time. While no smoking gun, the document is confirmation of some of the details, and was clearly leaked by someone from within the intelligence services.

Then there's the assassination attempt itself, which took place in 1996, months after the date of the leaked document. The plotters placed a bomb in the road ahead of time, but blew it up under the wrong vehicle. Gaddafi escaped, but in the ensuing firefight bystanders were killed, along with members of the Libyan terrorist group and the state security services.

In March 1998, Libya would be the first country to issue an arrest warrant against Osama Bin Laden, though this was 'buried' by the British and Americans.

According to journalist Guillaume Dasquie and Jean-Charles Brisard, an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac, British and US intelligence agencies buried the fact that the arrest warrant had come from Libya and played down the threat. Five months after the warrant was issued, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania...

...The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government's most wanted list with a reward of $25 million for his capture. He is wanted for his involvement in the African embassy bombings. Al-Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al-Qaeda leader returned to Afghanistan in 1996.

Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative, al-Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000 when he eluded a police raid on his house and fled abroad. The raid discovered a 180-page al-Qaeda 'manual for jihad' containing instructions for terrorist attacks. - The Observer

As Al-Liby was freely allowed to live in Manchester, the LIFG or Al Muqatila published their newsletter from an office in London. All this indicates that Al-Liby and associates were being protected by the British for years after the assassination attempt and despite the Libyan-demanded Interpol arrest warrant on Bin Laden. Likewise, it wasn't until after 9/11 that the US took the decision to freeze LIFG assets. As Brisard and Dasqui note in Forbidden Truth:

The irony in this game of bluff came in the end of September 2001, when the head of LIbya's intelligence agency, Musa Kusa, went to London to share important information that demanded a return favour: He handed over a list of a dozen names of al-Muqatila members living in London, whom his authorities would very much like to get their hands on. - Forbidden Truth, p102

So what of Al-Liby these days? Well, rumour has it he fled to Afghanistan after the raid on his Manchester flat. He was reported captured in 2002, though whether this was in Egypt or Sudan isn't clear. Either way, it wasn't Al-Liby that they captured, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Despite this, the BBC published a Who's Who in Al Qaeda a year later, in February 2003. This not only lists Al-Liby as captured, but as captured in Afghanistan. Further confusing things, these different reports state that he was captured in January, February or March, depending on which you read.

Then, in March 2005 someone with a superficially similar name, Abu Faraj Al-Libbi, is arrested and detained by Pakistani police. The Times alleged that all the initial celebratory comments from the Americans came from their confusing this Al-Libbi with Anas Al-Liby. Initially, the Pakistani authorities said the man would be detained and not extradited to America, though they quickly changed their minds.

Despite all this, the FBI and US Department of State both still retain wanted posters for Al-Liby on their websites, indicting him for involvement in the African Embassy bombings of 1998 and offering up to $5 million for information leading to his capture. Further muddying the picture, Amnesty International list Al-Liby as one of at least 39 people "who are believed to have been held in secret sites run by the United States government overseas." Whether this is because he's a terrorist, or an intelligence agent, or both, or neither remains unclear.

For further information on this complicity between Al Qaeda and Western intelligence services I recommend the work of Nafeez Ahmed, particularly his book The War on Truth, which he discusses in the following video.
http://www.investigatingtheterror.com/ar...Libyan.htm

[Magda Hassan]

MI6 hired Al Qaeda men to kill Gaddafi: ex-official


Published 2002-10-30 00:00:00

LONDON: The British government will this week go to unprecedented lengths to stop a renegade counter-intelligence officer, David Shayler, from making his most devastating claim yet: that the Libyan Islamic cell paid by British intelligence agents to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi in February 1996 were members of Al Qaeda.
The Libyan cell is believed to have included one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants, Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government's most wanted list with a reward of $25 million for his capture.
Al-Liby lived in Manchester, England, until May of last year when he eluded a police raid on his house and fled abroad. The raid discovered a 180-page manual for jihad' containing instructions for terrorist attacks.
The disclosure of al-Liby's involvement in the assassination cell are contained in Forbidden Truth, a new book by two French intelligence experts recently published in the US. Allegations that MI6 worked with one of the most senior Al Qaeda operatives are likely to be a major embarrassment to the British government.
UK Home Secretary David Blunkett and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw have signed a series of gagging orders to protect the British officers allegedly involved in the plot. The orders forced the judge to eject the media from court when the activities of the intelligence agencies are being discussed.
Shayler claims he was first briefed about the plot during formal meetings with colleagues from the foreign intelligence service MI6 when he was working on MI5's Libya desk.
The Observer newspaper in London on Sunday revealed that the MI6 officers involved in the alleged plot were Richard Bartlett, who has previously only been known under the codename PT16 and had overall responsibility for the operation, and David Watson, codename PT16B.
As Shayler's opposite number in MI6, Watson was responsible for running a Libyan agent, Tunworth', who was providing information from within the cell and, according to Shayler, passing at least $150,000 of British taxpayers' money to the Al Qaeda plotters.
Shayler said he wants to call Bartlett and Watson as witnesses, but may be prevented from doing so by the government.
Watson went on to work as the main MI6 contact in the British embassy in the Spanish capital Madrid, but it is believed that he and Bartlett have now been relocated and given new identities as a result of Shayler's revelations.
This weekend MI6 was said to be resigned to the men's identities being made public, although it believed the security situation post-September 11 meant that further measures would have to be put in place to ensure their safety.
The assassination attempt on Gaddafi was finally made in February 1996 during an official parade near the Libyan leader's home city of Sirte. A bomb or a grenade was thrown at the cavalcade, killing several bodyguards.
In a firefight that followed, three militants were killed. Gaddafi survived, but several innocent bystanders were killed. Footage released on Libyan TV in 1998 showed an alleged grenade attack on Gaddafi from the period of the alleged plot. A man is seen throwing an object into the dictator's entourage and is later said to have confessed to being a British agent.
Shayler claims Watson later boasted that there had been MI6 involvement in the operation. If permitted by the judge, he will call a witness to the conversation in which the MI6 man claimed that British Intelligence had paid the plotters.
According to Shayler, the woman, an Arabic translator at MI5, was also shocked by Watson's admission of intelligence service involvement in a serious crime that left several ordinary Libyans dead.
Malcolm Rifkind, the Conservative Foreign Secretary at the time, has repeatedly said he gave no such authorization and did not know of any payments to extremist Muslim groups.
A top-secret MI6 document leaked on the Internet two years ago confirmed British Intelligence knew of the plot, which involved five colonels, Libyan students and Libya veterans who served in Afghanistan'. Shayler claims this last phrase is intelligence shorthand for Al Qaeda.Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
http://beta.dawn.com/news/64086/mi6-hire...x-official

[Magda Hassan]

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http://cryptome.org/cx2.jpg

[Magda Hassan]

Ismail Kamoka & the LIFG

by Felix

May 14 2012

So, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, former leader of the LIFG, is going to sue former UK foreign Secretary Jack Straw as reported by the Telegraph, 24 April 2012,[ See also Guardian, April 18 2012:Belhaj and his wife (Fatima Bouchar)....are seeking damages from Straw for the trauma they suffered] This is the same Libyan Islamic Fighting Group which, was trying to murder national head of state Gaddafi [see below] possibly using either UK or US taxpayers' money, or both but naturally deniable and denied. Certainly it was linked to Al Qaeda and as such was a proscribed organisation. But then it might must be part of the closed circle of secrecy which keeps us all in a state of perpetual fear.

Mary Fitzgerald of the Irish Times, among whose readership is no doubt Dublin based (sometimes) Mahdi Al-Harati, puts us in the picture:

MaryFitzgerlT Mary Fitzgerald
#Libya's Islamist parties: MB-linked Justice & Construction; ex-LIFG have split between Hizb al-Watan (w/ Belhaj) + Hizb al-Umma (w/ Saadi)1:34 PM May 2nd 2012


[NB Saadi = Sami Al-Saadi]
[The Justice & Construction Party formed by Islamists and Independents elected its leader as reported in the Tripoli Post of March 3 2012, Mohammed Sawan ( Mohamed Sowan) from Misrata, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, formerly detained under Gaddafi but released in 2006 and who expected women to play "a prominent role". "We have created a new era in Libya by electing a party leader democratically," said Khalil Sawalim, a UK-based rights activist.The LIFG merged with Al-Qaeda in November 2007

A member of the LIFG broke cover in early March 2011 to speak to Press TV's Yvonne Ridley and Afshin Rattansi: Ismail Kamoka. He was briefly in the news after the fall of Tripoli when the files of the Jamahiriya were opened up, allegedly. Since then he has disappeared.
For the record I have captured his quite unremarkable interview here with the announced "dissident and leading member of the LIFG, Ismail Kamoka. For a leading member, he keeps a low profile, difficult though with the huge bushy beard. [photo]

Ridley introduced Kamoka and his lifelong hobby thus: "....he's been committed to overthrowing Gaddafi for nearly 20 years...
"you must really want to be in Libya at the moment. Tell us about the nature of the opposition in Libya" "There are 4 or 5 groups as far as I know [note - it seems to crop up no 26 of 27 opposition groups here in Feb 2011] .I was with one of these groups,its called the Libyan Fighting group (sic). The main aim for this group before before [is] to take, the specific one, they try many times to assassinate Gaddafi. The reason for that one is to give freedom for the people [when] decidedfor themselves what they are going to do because the regime in that timeis very brutal and Gaddafi is a dictator."
"What did you feel about how Tony Blair,[and] the west were becomeing friends with the person you were trying to assassinate?" "I think I felt very angry because Tony Blair himself tried to have a good "relation" [ship] with Libya for one reason, for the benefit of his country . He doesn't care about the benefit of Libyan people."
"But what about life after Gaddafi? This is something that everybody is focussing on at the moment. Are these groups that are in Libya and of course dissidents like yourself - are you capable of forming a government and taking Libya ahead into the new phase?" "I think so. The Libyan people they are capable they have very high(ly) qualified people""But what has been the price been so far for this freedom, there is talk of 1000s of peole injured more than a thousand dead?" "We feel very sad about this price but if you read the history,if you want the freedom the freedom doesn't come easy"
"So they don't want the king back, but Gaddafi and his sons are saying there will be Al Qaeda in Libya ,the Islamic extremists will take over even while he talks about Omar al Mukhtar at the same time. Did you feel while watching his speech...?"I think when I (heard) this speech they try to play this game with the people because the first part they tried to play on the fears of the people and with this fears it provoked the people to come out and in the uprising everyone doesn't care even he would like to die for his own country. They changed their tactics, they changed their new game they tried to play with Islamic extremism. They will come and take over something like that. In reality, the main point is now we need the regime gone, we need Gaddafi to get out.
"How frustruating is it for you sittng in London? Are you tempted to go out and join the people in this revolution?""My heart is there since 15 February. I tried to help my country, my people 20 years ago. I feel this is the time now for me for everybody that is outside to be there because we have been waiting for this a long time"

Perhaps the preferred destination of NATO is the descent of Libya and the rest of of the Mediterranean rim into an Islamic Ice Age

Mr Kamoka (the name seems local to Pakistan, rather than Libya, but then these LIFG types are very well travelled with many interesting visas in their passports and many aliases as well. Indeed Mr K also seems to have an alias) has gone to ground again and he registers no presence in 2012, indeed no presence in Libya in 2011. Perhaps he never went.

Former LIFG member Numan Ben Othman or Noman Benotman is based in London and now embedded as a senior researcher with the Quilliam Foundation "challenging extremism". Limited hangout information from early 2005 on the LIFG here on the Centre for Defense Inforation site : In the Spotlight: The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)

On October 15 2009, Islamisation Watch noted (captured AFP report) that:
Libya on Thursday freed 88 Islamists and announced it will demolish Abu Slim prison, notorious for what human rights groups say was a 1996 massacre in which more than 1,000 prisoners were killed.
The Islamists with Al-Qaeda links walked out of the Tripoli prison, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.
The Kadhafi Foundation, headed by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, confirmed the planned closure of Abu Slim, saying the remaining inmates would be transferred to another jail.
The building "will be destroyed in the next few days," a Libyan source told AFP, adding that a residential district and a green space would replace the prison, which has often been used to detain political prisoners....The Foundation, in a joint statement with lawyers' groups, said: "45 members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and 43 members of other jihadist groups were freed" from Abu Slim on Thursday.
"Apart from the LIFG members, the other people freed were former Al-Qaeda members who were active in Afghanistan or Iraq," Saleh Saleh Abdessalem, an aide to Seif al-Islam, told AFP
According to Abu Hashem, his nom-de-guerre, the release programme followed "talks with Seif al-Islam through the intermediary of (Libyan cleric) Ali Sallabi."
The Kadhafi Foundation said it is "working to strengthen peace in Libya," emphasising the "big success" of the dialogue with the LIFG, formed in secret in Afghanistan in the early 1990s and which came to public notice in 1995 when it launched an armed campaign against Kadhafi's regime.

Al-Qaeda announced in November 2007 that the LIFG had joined the jihadist network.The men's release comes at a time when Seif al-Islam is reportedly being proposed for Libya's second most

HRW duly reported this the following day with calls for more releases (of people whose mission was to assassinate Gaddafi).

Note on the LIFG from Amnesty International,June 2010 report, "Libya of Tomorrow - what hope for human rights"
In recent years there have been some welcome developments. Hundreds of members of al- Jama'a al-Islamiya al-Muqatila (the Libyan Islamic Fighting Front, LIFG) and other groups,many of whom had been held arbitrarily for years, have been released.
The releases were reportedly facilitated by the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation (Gaddafi Development Foundation, GDF) headed by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader.50 For several years, the GDF engaged in a dialogue with leaders of the LIFG, which contributed to the group publicly renouncing violence in 2009.
The latest releasestook place in March 2010. According to Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, among those released were 80 individuals cleared by courts, 100 individuals accused of involvement in terrorism-related activities with armed groups in Iraq and 34 members of the LIFG, including several who had been returned from secret detention by the US authorities.
However, the Secretary of the General People's Committee for Justice (equivalent to the Minister of Justice), estimated that more than 300 individuals were arbitrarily detained by the ISA at the beginning of 2010.
This means that more than 200 individuals were still detained arbitrarily according to official estimates after the release of 80 individuals cleared by courts in March 2010.
Real numbers are believed to be higher, given that this estimate does not include those detained after unfair trials or prisoners of conscience.


Note 15: In the late 1990s, several of the surviving members of the LIFG were believed to have fled to various countries in Europe, Asia and the Gulf. The LIFG was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in December 2004 by the US Department of State.
The US Country Report on Terrorism of 2008 statesthat some members of the LIFG had links with the international terrorist movement and that some were believed to be part of the al-Qa'ida leadership. US forces captured a number of Libyan nationals suspected of belonging to the LIFG in Pakistan and transferred several of them to Libya after 2004.
In 2010, the US Govt listed LIFG as a " Foreign Terrorist Organization".
Mr Kamoka was one of five LIFG members arrested in police swoops in the UK. [however, in August 2003,we read courtesy of the Institute of Race Relations,: Found in possession of £6,000. Sun newspaper reported that he was being held under ATCSA at Belmarsh and that police believed the money was for the purposes of terrorism., an interesting case of a tabloid newspaper citation]On 9/11 2011, it was announced that two of them, Mr Kamoka had also become litigious : "Mr Kamoka plans to sue Britain for detaining him under control orders." (lifted in 2009)

Note on the Quilliam Foundation.
This foundation was set up with British taxpayers' money by Tony Blair and Jack Straw ***, with the ostensible purpose of "watching" other jihadis operating under the wings of MI6. Benotman renounced his jihadi image and worked on behalf of Britain, securing release from the present Libyan government, the National Transitional Council, of 600 former activists from prison, arguing for this on the basis of the role that the LIFG played at the frontline to remove the Qaddafi regime.

PS Is Mr Kamoka getting younger by the day? Compare the photo seen at this June 11 2007 BBC article, Three Jailed over terror funding with the one above. Or does he dye his bushy beard?*** These are the guys Belhaj is going to sue. These are the guys who set up the Quilliam Foundation. These are the guys who wanted a rapprochement with Gadafi who set up the Quilliam Foundation which employs Benotman who belonged to the LIFG whose mission was not rapprochement but assassination of Gaddafi...Go figure. But Belhaj actually doesn't want to sue them any more, he just wants an apology. Like one does. Because he now has his own political party.
7/7/2012Something I missed - Al Qaeda LIFG leader Abdul Belhaj writes column for Guardian![Land Destroyer Sept 27 2011] by Tony Cartalucci"However, Mr. Belhaj has had time, apparently, allegedly, to draft a lengthy editorial titled, "The revolution belongs to all Libyans, secular or not," gladly published by the London Guardian [CiF], [The revolution belongs to all Libyans, secular or not] where he is allowed to go on at length, whitewashing what is essential a life-long career in terrorism and expound the merits of the wholesale mass murder he and his cohorts, under NATO cover, are committing against the Libyan people"No comment needed.
Update 19 Aug 2012
A blog which seems interested in the LIFG, Harati & Co:
The Flower Throwers

http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com.au/20...-lifg.html

[Magda Hassan]

Profile: Anas al-Liby

a.k.a. Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai'i, Nazih al Raghie, Anas al Sebai, Nazih Abdul Hamed Al-Raghie, Nazih Abdul Hamed al-Ruqai'i

Related Entities:

• Leader of Al-Qaeda
  

Anas al-Liby was a participant or observer in the following events:

Late 1993-Late 1994: Ali Mohamed and Anas Al-Liby Scout Targets in Africa

In late 1993, bin Laden asks Ali Mohamed to scout out possible US, British, French, and Israeli targets in Nairobi, Kenya. Mohamed will later confess that in December 1993, "I took pictures, drew diagrams and wrote a report." Then he travels to Sudan, where bin Laden and his top advisers review Mohamed's work. In 1994, Mohamed claims that "bin Laden look[s] at a picture of the American Embassy and point[s] to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber." A truck will follow bin Laden's directions and crash into the embassy in 1998. Mohamed seems to spend considerable time in Nairobi working with the cell he set up there and conducting more surveillance. He also is sent to the East African nation of Djibouti to scout targets there, and is asked to scout targets in the West African nation of Senegal. [Los Angeles Times, 10/21/2000; Chicago Tribune, 12/11/2001; LA Weekly, 5/24/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004] Much of his work seems to be done together with Anas al-Liby, a top al-Qaeda leader with a mysterious link to Western intelligence agencies similar to Mohamed's. In 1996, British intelligence will pay al-Liby to assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi (see 1996), and then will let him live openly in Britain until 2000 (see Late 1995-May 2000). Al-Liby is said to be a "computer wizard" known for "working closely" with Mohamed. [New York Times, 2/13/2001; New York Times, 4/5/2001] L'Houssaine Kherchtou, an al-Qaeda member who later turns witness for a US trial (see September 2000), was trained in surveillance techniques in Pakistan by Mohamed in 1992. Kherchtou will claim he later comes across Mohamed in 1994 in Nairobi. Mohamed, Anas al-Liby, and a relative of al-Liby's use Kherchtou's apartment for surveillance work. Kherchtou sees al-Liby with a camera about 500 meters from the US embassy. [Washington File, 2/22/2001] Mohamed returns to the US near the end of 1994 after an FBI agent phones him in Nairobi and asks to speak to him about an upcoming trial. [Washington File, 2/22/2001]
Entity Tags: Ali Mohamed, L'Houssaine Kherchtou, Anas al-Liby, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Osama bin Laden
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Shortly After June 26, 1995: US Considers Bombing Bin Laden for Sponsoring Assassination Attempt on Egyptian President

Hussan al-Turabi. [Source: CNN]On June 26, 1995, there is a failed assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as he visits Ethiopia (see June 26, 1995). The CIA soon concludes Osama bin Laden authorized the operation, and they plan a retaliation attack. [US Congress, 7/24/2003] Evidence suggests that the government of Sudan and Hassan al-Turabi, Sudan's leader, know where bin Laden is living in Sudan and helped support the plot. The United Nations Security Council places sanctions on Sudan as a result. The US examines options for attacking bin Laden and/or al-Turabi's facilities in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. The options developed by the US military are rejected for being unstealthy and a de facto war on Sudan. In the ensuing months, there are reports of Egyptian covert operations against bin Laden and an Egyptian military build-up on the Sudanese border. These factors influence bin Laden's decision to move to Afghanistan in 1996 (see May 18, 1996). [Clarke, 2004, pp. 140-41] One suspect in the assassination, Anas al-Liby, moves to Britain. The British government not only refuses to extradite him to Egypt, but secretly hires him to assassinate the leader of Libya (see (Late 1995) and 1996).
Entity Tags: United Nations Security Council, Hosni Mubarak, Hassan al-Turabi, Osama bin Laden, Anas al-Liby, Central Intelligence Agency, Sudan
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

(Late 1995): Al-Qaeda Leader Allowed to Live in Britain Despite Being Wanted for Attempting to Assassinate Egyptian President

In June 1995, al-Qaeda sponsors a failed assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (see June 26, 1995 and Shortly After June 26, 1995). Some time in 1995, al-Qaeda leader Anas al-Liby moves to Britain and applies for political asylum. Not long after he arrives, Egypt asks the British government to extradite him for his alleged role in the assassination attempt. They send a detailed file on him, including information on how he had fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and then moved with him to Sudan. But the extradition request is refused. British officials question whether al-Liby could get a fair trial in Egypt and fear he could face the death penalty. The next year, British intelligence hires al-Liby, a Libyan, to assassinate Libyan ruler Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi (see 1996). Al-Liby will continue to live openly in Britain until 2000 (see Late 1995-May 2000 and May 2000). [Times (London), 1/16/2003]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Anas al-Liby, Hosni Mubarak, Al-Qaeda
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Late 1995-May 2000: Al-Qaeda Leader Connected to British Intelligence Lives Openly in Britain

Anas al-Liby. [Source: FBI]Anas al-Liby, member of a Libyan al-Qaeda affiliate group called Al-Muqatila, lives in Britain during this time. He had stayed with bin Laden in Sudan (see May 18, 1996). In late 1995, he moves to Britain and applies for political asylum, claiming to be a political enemy of the Libyan government (see (Late 1995)). He is involved in an al-Qaeda plot (see Late 1993-Late 1994) that will result in the bombing of two US embassies in Africa in 1998 (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). The British government suspects he is a high-level al-Qaeda operative, and Egypt tells Britain that he is wanted for an assassination attempt of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (see (Late 1995)). In 1996, he is involved in a plot with the British intelligence agency to assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi (see 1996), and presumably his ability to live in Britain is connected to cooperation with that plot. [Observer, 11/10/2002; Times (London), 1/16/2003] After the failed assassination attempt in 1996, the British allegedly continues to support Al-Muqatilafor instance, the group openly publishes a newsletter from a London office. [Brisard and Dasquie, 2002, pp. 97-98] Whistleblower David Shayler, a British intelligence agent, gives British authorities details of this Libya plot in 1998 and again in 1999, and later will serve a short prison sentence for revealing this information to the public (see November 5, 2002). [Observer, 8/27/2000] In late 1998, al-Liby is monitored calling an al-Qaeda operative in the US and discussing their ties to one of the African embassy bombers, but this results in no action against al-Liby (see Shortly After August 12, 1998). He lives in Manchester until May of 2000. In 2002, it will be reported that he eluded a police raid on his house and fled abroad. [Observer, 11/10/2002] However, in a 2011 book, FBI agent Ali Soufan will claim that al-Liby actually was arrested and then let go (see May 2000). His asylum application will still be under review at the time of his arrest. [Times (London), 1/16/2003] An important al-Qaeda training manual is discovered in the raid on his Manchester residence (see May 2000). The US will later post a $25 million reward for al-Liby's capture. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2002; Observer, 11/10/2002]
Entity Tags: United Kingdom, Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Osama bin Laden, Anas al-Liby, Al-Muqatila, Al-Qaeda, David Shayler
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Shortly After August 12, 1998: Embassy Bomber in Britain Is Monitored as He Warns Embassy Bomber in California, but Neither Are Arrested

Double agent Ali Mohamed is living openly in Sacramento, California. His computer and telephone are being monitored by the FBI (see October 1997-September 10, 1998). On August 9, two days after the African embassy bombings, he told the FBI on the telephone that he knows who the bombers are but he will not reveal their names (see August 9, 1998). On August 12, one of the bombers, Mohamed al-Owhali, is secretly arrested in Kenya and immediately begins confessing what he knows (see August 12-25, 1998). Somehow al-Qaeda operative Anas al-Liby learns about al-Owhali's arrest, even though al-Liby is living in Britain, and later that month he calls Mohamed. The call is monitored and FBI agent Jack Cloonan will later recall, "Anas says to [Mohamed], Do you know that brother [al-Owhali]? Cause if you do, get the f_ck out of there." Mohamed makes plans to escape the US, but strangely he decides to respond to a subpoena and testify in New York City before he goes. He will be arrested there on September 10, just after testifying (see September 10, 1998). [Lance, 2006, pp. 297-298] Remarkably, even though al-Liby worked with Mohamed and others on the embassy bomb plot in Kenya (see Late 1993-Late 1994), he is not arrested and continues to live in Britain. His residence there will not be raided until May 2000, and by that time he will be gone (see May 2000). It will later be alleged that al-Liby is protected because he worked with British intelligence on a plot to kill Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi (see 1996).
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ali Mohamed, Anas al-Liby
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

May 2000: FBI Suspect Al-Qaeda Is Infiltrating US after Training Manual Is Discovered

The inside cover of the training manual found in Manchester, depicting a knife plunging through the Earth. [Source: FBI]British authorities raid the Manchester home of Anas al-Liby. Remarkably, al-Liby was a top al-Qaeda leader who nonetheless had been allowed to live in Britain (see Late 1995-May 2000); some speculate his treatment was connected to a joint al-Qaeda-British plot to assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi in 1996 (see 1996). [Observer, 9/22/2001] The raid may have been conducted as part of an investigation into al-Liby's role in the 1998 embassy bombings. [Associated Press, 9/21/2001] Al-Liby is arrested and then let go for lack of evidence (see May 2000). But shortly after he is let go, investigators searching through his possessions find "Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants," a 180-page al-Qaeda training manual written in Arabic. FBI agent Ali Soufan, who speaks Arabic, is the first to discover the manual. [Soufan, 2011, pp. 113-114] The manual appears to have been written in the late 1980's by double agent Ali Mohamed. He wrote the manual, and many others, by cobbling together information from his personal experiences and stolen US training guides (see November 5, 1990). Others have since updated it as different versions spread widely. "The FBI does not know if any of the Sept. 11 hijackers used the manual… However, many of their tactics come straight from Mohamed's lessons, such as how to blend in as law-abiding citizens in a Western society." [Chicago Tribune, 12/11/2001] George Andrew, deputy head of anti-terrorism for the FBI's New York City office, later will claim that after studying the manual, the FBI suspect that al-Qaeda operatives are attempting to infiltrate US society. But the FBI think they are not yet ready to strike. [Associated Press, 9/21/2001] The existence of the manual is made public in a US trial in April 2001. [New York Times, 4/5/2001]
Entity Tags: United Kingdom, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Anas al-Liby, Al-Qaeda, Ali Mohamed, Ali Soufan
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

May 2000: Al-Qaeda Leader Is Arrested in Britain and Then Released

The front of the Manchester manual, deceptively covered with flowers. [Source: FBI]Al-Qaeda leader Anas al-Liby is arrested in Manchester, England, and then let go. According to Ali Soufan, an FBI agent from 1997 to 2005, the I-49 squad, a mix of FBI agents and US attorneys, uncovers evidence that al-Liby is living in Manchester. FBI agent John O'Neill assembles a team, including Soufan, to go there. Soufan will later say that they are met by local police, and he tells them: "Anas al-Liby is a senior al-Qaeda operative. He's a computer expert and was part of the team that did surveillance on the embassy in Nairobi [that resulted in the 1998 bombing there (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998)]. This is potentially a big win for us." Al-Liby is caught in his residence and taken to a local police station. However, he denies any involvement in terrorism. According to Soufan, al-Liby is smart and careful, and no incriminating documents or computer files can be quickly found in his residence. O'Neill wants him held until his possessions can be searched more thoroughly, but he is immediately released. Al-Liby evades a team sent to follow him, and skips the country. Not long afterwards, Soufan, who speaks Arabic, discovers a terrorist training manual written in Arabic in al-Liby's possessions (see May 2000). In a book he writes that is published in 2011, Soufan curiously will not mention the timing of this arrest, even though timing is given to most other events discussed in the book. But the arrest is placed between events that occur in late 1999 and early 2000. [Soufan, 2011, pp. 113-114] In April 2001, the New York Times will first report on the manual, and will mention that it was discovered in a raid in Manchester in May 2000. [New York Times, 4/5/2001] Shortly after 9/11, it will be revealed that the raid was of al-Liby's residence. [Associated Press, 9/21/2001; Observer, 9/22/2001] In 2002, it will be reported that al-Liby was not at home during the raid, and then escaped the country. Furthermore, al-Liby has been living openly in Britain since 1995, apparently as part of a political deal after he had taken part in a plot with the British intelligence agency MI6 to assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi in 1996 (see Late 1995-May 2000 and 1996). [Observer, 11/10/2002] The embarrassing fact that al-Liby is actually arrested and then released will not be revealed until September 2011, in Soufan's book. [Soufan, 2011, pp. 113-114] The US will later post a $25 million reward for al-Liby, and his death or arrest will never be confirmed. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2002]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, John O'Neill, Anas al-Liby, I-49, United Kingdom, Ali Soufan
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

October 10, 2001: FBI Issues List of 22 Most Wanted Terrorists; $5 Million Reward Placed on All of Them

The FBI releases a list of its 22 most wanted terrorists. The US government offers up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of anyone of the list. The men are:
Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden, who was indicted by a grand jury in 1998 (see June 8, 1998), Ayman al-Zawahiri, linked to a 1995 bombing in Pakistan (see November 19, 1995), and Mohammed Atef, who provided training to Somali fighters before the Black Hawk Down incident (see Late 1992-October 1993);
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), for his role in the 1995 Bojinka plot (see January 6, 1995). KSM is actually the mastermind of 9/11, although the US intelligence community has allegedly not yet pieced this information together (see (November 7, 2001));
Several other operatives suspected of involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998): Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (see August 2, 2008), Mustafa Fadhil, Usama al-Kini (a.k.a. Fahid Muhammad Ally Msalam (see August 6-7, 1998)), Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (see July 25-29, 2004), Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan (see July 11, 2002), Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (see September 10, 2002), Anas al-Liby (see January 20, 2002- March 20, 2002), Saif al-Adel (see Spring 2002), Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali, and Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah (see April 12, 2006);
Abdul Rahman Yasin, a US-Iraqi involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see March 4-5,1993);
Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Mughassil, Ali Saed Bin Ali El-Houri, Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub, and Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed Al-Nasser, for their alleged part in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia (see June 25, 1996);
Imad Mugniyah, Hassan Izz-Al-Din, and Ali Atwa for the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in June 1985. [CNN, 10/10/2001]
Entity Tags: Mohammed Atef, Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah, Mustafa Fadhil, Osama bin Laden, Saif al-Adel, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Usama al-Kini, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, Imad Mugniyah, Mohammed Hamed Ali, Hassan Izz-Al-Din, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Abdul Rahman Yasin, Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed Al-Nasser, Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Mughassil, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub, Ali Saed Bin Ali El-Houri, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ali Atwa, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Anas al-Liby
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

January 20, 2002- March 20, 2002: Al-Qaeda Leader Who Worked with British Intelligence Possibly Secretly Captured and Sent to Egypt

In January 2002, the Observer reports that Anas al-Liby, one of al-Qaeda's top leaders, has been recently captured in Afghanistan. Al-Liby is considered one of bin Laden's computer experts, and a long-time member of al-Qaeda's ruling council. [Observer, 1/20/2002] In early March 2002, the London Times mentions al-Liby's capture as an established fact. [London Times, 3/11/2002] Then, in late March 2002, the London Times and the Washington Post report that al-Liby has been recently captured in Sudan. Anonymous CIA sources and anonymous "senior administration officials" claim that al-Liby has been captured, but the Sudanese and US governments officially deny the arrest. The London Times says the arrest "has been kept a closely guarded secret." Some senior officials who told the Post al-Liby had been arrested later change their account and say it was someone with a similar name. [London Times, 3/17/2002; Washington Post, 3/19/2002; Washington Post, 3/20/2002] Al-Liby remains on the FBI's most wanted list, with a $25 million reward on his name. It will later be lowered to $5 million. [London Times, 5/8/2005] Al-Liby appears to have collaborated with British intelligence to kill Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi in 1996 and was allowed to openly live in Britain until 2000 (see Late 1995-May 2000; 1996). In 2003, it will be reported that al-Liby was captured in Sudan and then secretly deported to Egypt, where he is wanted for an attempted assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (see (Late 1995)). [Scotland on Sunday, 10/26/2003] In 2007, human rights groups will list al-Liby as a possible ghost prisoner still held by the US (see June 7, 2007).
Entity Tags: Anas al-Liby
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

September 10, 2002: 10 of Al-Qaeda's 24 Pre-9/11 Leaders Said to Be Killed or Captured

Usama al-Kini (a.k.a. Fahid Muhammad Ally Msalam). [Source: FBI]The New York Times reports that 10 out of the 24 al-Qaeda leaders considered most important by the CIA before 9/11 have been killed or captured. [New York Times, 9/10/2002] The four most important figures considered still at large are:
Osama bin Laden (Saudi). He will be killed in 2011 (see May 2, 2011).
Ayman al-Zawahiri (Egyptian).
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (Kuwaiti/Pakistani). He will be captured in 2003 (see February 29 or March 1, 2003).
Saif al-Adel (Egyptian).
Other figures considered still at large are:
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (Egyptian).
Mustafa Muhammad Fadhil (Egyptian).
Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah (Egyptian). He will be killed in 2006 (see April 12, 2006).
Usama al-Kini (a.k.a. Fahid Muhammad Ally Msalam) (Kenyan). He will be killed in 2009 (see January 1, 2009).
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (a.k.a. Haroun Fazul) (Comoros Islander). He will be killed in 2011 (see June 10, 2011).
Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid (a.k.a. Abu Hafs the Mauritanian) (Mauritanian).
Amin ul-Haq (Afghan).
Midhat Mursi (Egyptian). He will be killed in 2008 (see July 28, 2008).
Anas al-Liby (Libyan). He may have been secretly captured already (see January 20, 2002- March 20, 2002).
Suliman abu Ghaith (Kuwaiti).
Saad bin Laden (Saudi). He apparently will be killed in 2009 (see July 22, 2009).
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi (Saudi). He will be captured in 2003 (see February 29 or March 1, 2003). [New York Times, 9/10/2002]
The four leaders captured are:
Abu Zubaida (Palestinian) (see March 28, 2002).
Abdul Rahim al-Sharqawi (Yemeni) (see Late 2001 and February 7, 2002).
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (Libyan) (see December 19, 2001).
Abu Zubair al-Haili (Saudi) (see June 8, 2002 and After). [New York Times, 9/10/2002]
Five of the six leaders believed killed are:
Mohammed Atef (Egyptian) (see November 15, 2001).
Abu Jaffa (a.k.a. Abu Jafar al-Jaziri) (Algerian).
Abu Salah al-Yemeni (Yemeni).
Tariq Anwar al-Sayyid Ahmad (Egyptian).
Muhammad Salah (a.k.a. Nasr Fahmi Nasr Hasanayn) (Egyptian). [New York Times, 9/10/2002]
The sixth leader believed killed is not named. One year after 9/11, US intelligence identifies 20 current high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders, though it is not mentioned who the six new leaders are who replaced some of the killed or captured leaders. [New York Times, 9/10/2002] This list of leaders, while instructive, is curiously incomplete because it fails to mention al-Qaeda leaders known as important to US intelligence before 9/11, such as Hambali, Khallad bin Attash, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Thirwat Salah Shehata, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, and Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.
Entity Tags: Mushin Musa Matwalli Atwah, Muhammad Salah, Mohammed Atef, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Suliman abu Ghaith, Saif al-Adel, Saad bin Laden, Usama al-Kini, Midhat Mursi, Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid, Osama bin Laden, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Abu Jaffa, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Abdul Rahim al-Sharqawi, Abu Salah al-Yemeni, Abu Zubaida, Abu Zubair al-Haili, Anas al-Liby, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Amin ul-Haq, Al-Qaeda
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

June 7, 2007: Human Rights Groups Allege Dozens of Prisoners Have Disappeared into Secret US Prisons

Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi. [Source: Public domain]Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and four other organizations file a US federal lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act seeking information about 39 people they believe have "disappeared" while held in US custody. The groups mentions 39 people who were reportedly captured overseas and then held in secret CIA prisons. The US acknowledges detaining three of the 39 but the groups say there is strong evidence, including witness testimony, of secret detention in 18 more cases and some evidence of secret detention in the remaining 18 cases. In September 2006, President Bush acknowledged the CIA had interrogated dozens of suspects at secret CIA prisons and said 14 of those were later sent to Guantanamo Bay (see September 6, 2006). At that time it was announced that there were no prisoners remaining in custody in US secret facilities (see September 2-3, 2006). However, the groups claim that in April 2007 a prisoner named Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo, demonstrating the system is still operating (see Autumn 2006-Late April 2007). The groups also claim that in September 2002 the US held the two children of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), then aged seven and nine, in an adult detention center. KSM was later captured and is now held at Guantanamo; it is unknown what happened to his children. [Reuters, 6/7/2007] Some of the more important suspects named include:
Hassan Ghul, said to be an important al-Qaeda courier. In 2005, ABC News reported he was being held in a secret CIA prison (see November 2005). Apparently, the CIA transferred Ghul to Pakistani custody in 2006 so he would not have to join other prisoners sent to the Guantantamo prison (see (Mid-2006)), and Pakistan released him in 2007, allowing him to rejoin al-Qaeda (see (Mid-2007)).
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader. The same ABC News report also mentioned him. Al-Libi was secretly transferred to Libya around 2006 (see Between November 2005 and September 2006) and will die there in 2009 under mysterious circumstances (see (May 10, 2009)).
Mohammed Omar Abdul-Rahman, a son of the Blind Sheikh, Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman. The same ABC News report also mentioned him. He was reportedly captured in Pakistan in 2003 (see February 13, 2003).
Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi, a.k.a. Abu Bakr al Azdi. He is said to be a candidate 9/11 hijacker who was held back for another operation. In 2004, the 9/11 Commission reported he was in US custody.
Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed. Wanted for involvement in the 1998 African embassy bombings, he was reportedly captured in Somalia in March 2003. Witnesses claim to have seen him in two secret US prisons in 2004.
Yassir al-Jazeeri. Said to be a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader, he was reportedly captured in Pakistan in March 2003. Witnesses later saw him in a secret CIA prison (see March 15, 2003).
Musaad Aruchi, a nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He was reported captured in Pakistan in June 2004 and then taken into CIA custody (see June 12, 2004).
Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. Wanted for a role in the African embassy bombings, there were various reports he was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and taken into US custody (see July 11, 2002). However, it appears these reports are false, because he will allegedly be killed in Pakistan in 2009 (see January 1, 2009).
Anas al-Liby, also wanted for a role in the African embassy bombings. He was reportedly captured in 2002 (see January 20, 2002- March 20, 2002) and it is suspected the US has handed him over to Egypt. [Human Rights Watch, 6/7/2007]
Entity Tags: Pacha Wazir, Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, Yassir al-Jazeeri, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Human Rights Watch, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi, Amnesty International, Anas al-Liby, Hassan Ghul, Mohammed Omar Abdul-Rahman, Musaad Aruchi
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline, Civil Liberties

May 3, 2011: US Congressperson Says at Least 12 of 20 Senior Al-Qaeda Leaders Are Hiding in Pakistan

The United States believes that at least a dozen senior leaders of al-Qaeda are on the run in Pakistan, according to Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI). He says, "Of the 20 senior leaders in al-Qaeda, at least a dozen of them we believe to be traveling around Pakistan someplace." Rogers chairs the House Intelligence Committee, and is privy to secret intelligence not even most other members of Congress are briefed about. His comments come one day after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan (see May 2, 2011). The Telegraph publishes a list of the 12 wanted in Pakistan, which seems to be based on intelligence from Rogers:
Ayman al-Zawahiri. He is al-Qaeda's second-in-command, and presumably the top al-Qaeda leader now that bin Laden has been killed.
Saif al-Adel. He possibly is al-Qaeda's military chief. Possibly recently released from house arrest in Iran.
Suliman Abu Ghaith. He was al-Qaeda's spokesperson until he was detained in Iran in 2002 or 2003. He apparently was allowed to leave in 2010 (see September 29, 2010), and it is believed he has rejoined al-Qaeda.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah. He is said to be on al-Qaeda's top council. He may also be in Iran.
Adnan Shukrijumah. He used to live in the US, and he may be in charge of al-Qaeda operations in North America.
Rashid Rauf. He was involved in a 2006 plot to blow up airplanes in Britain (see August 10, 2006). He escaped from a Pakistani prison in 2007 (see December 14, 2007), and was reported killed by a US drone attack in 2008 (see November 22, 2008), but some sources say he is still alive.
Ilyas Kashmiri. He is thought to have masterminded some recent attacks in India and Pakistan.
Hakimullah Mahsud. He is leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban (the Pakistani Taliban), a group said to be closely allied with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. [Daily Telegraph, 5/3/2011]
Ghulam Mustafa. He may have been al-Qaeda's chief in Pakistan, but he was arrested and released twice by the Pakistani government between 2004 and 2006. Other militants now suspect him because of his suspiciously quick releases from prison, but he is still wanted by the US. [Asia Times, 1/5/2006; Daily Telegraph, 5/3/2011]
Sheikh Abu Yahia al-Libi. He escaped from a US prison in Afghanistan in 2005 (see July 11, 2005), and has become a respected religious figure for al-Qaeda.
Anas al-Liby. The US has a $5 million reward for him. He may have been arrested in 2002 (see January 20, 2002- March 20, 2002).
Qari Saifullah Akhtar. He is the leader of the Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI, or the Movement of Islamic Holy War), a Pakistani militant group. He also is an alleged member of al-Qaeda who was released by Pakistan from custody in December 2010. [Daily Telegraph, 5/3/2011]
Entity Tags: Ayman al-Zawahiri, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Anas al-Liby, Adnan Shukrijumah, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Suliman abu Ghaith, Sheikh Abu Yahia al-Libi, Tehrik-i-Taliban, Rashid Rauf, Ilyas Kashmiri, Hakimullah Mahsud, Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami, Mike Rogers, Ghulam Mustafa, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, Saif al-Adel
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp...as_al-liby