"Dear Mu'ammar" - signed "Best wishes yours ever, Tony"

[David Guyatt]

Revealed: how Blair colluded with Gaddafi regime in secret

Libyan government papers pieced together by team of London lawyers show how UK cosied up to Tripoli over dissidents






Tony Blair's letter to Muammar Gaddafi was among documents recovered from Libyan government buildings. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesIan Cobain
Friday 23 January 201518.12 GMT

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Tony Blair wrote to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to thank him for the "excellent cooperation" between the two countries' counter-terrorism agencies following a period during which the UK and Libya worked together to arrange for Libyan dissidents to be kidnapped and flown to Tripoli, along with their families.
The letter, written in 2007, followed a period in which the dictator's intelligence officers were permitted to operate in the UK, approaching and intimidating Libyan refugees in an attempt to persuade them to work as informants for both countries' agencies.
Addressed "Dear Mu'ammar" and signed "Best wishes yours ever, Tony", the letter was among hundreds of pages of documents recovered from Libyan government offices following the 2011 revolution and pieced together by a team of London lawyers.

Cooperation between British spies and Gaddafi's Libya revealed in official papers

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The lawyers are bringing damages claims on behalf of a dozen Gaddafi opponents who were targeted by the two countries' agencies during the covert cooperation. The claimants were variously detained and allegedly mistreated in Saudi Arabia, rendered from Mali to Libya, or detained and subjected to control orders in the UK.
Six Libyan men, the widow of a seventh, and five British citizens of Libyan and Somali origin are bringing claims against the British government on the basis of the recovered documents, alleging false imprisonment, blackmail, misfeasance in public office and conspiracy to assault.
The letter has emerged at a time when the last Labour government's foreign policy record is coming under intense scrutiny. This week Blairrejected suggestions he was to blame for the delayed publication of the report of the Chilcot inquiry into the UK's decision to join the war in Iraq. Blair is among those expected to be criticised in the report.
Libya, meanwhile, has descended into further violence and economic chaos since the revolution, with rival militias shelling residential areas, destroying airports and burning down oil refineries in their struggle for wealth and influence.
The recovered documents show that MI5 and MI6 submitted more than 1,600 questions to be put to two opposition leaders after they had been kidnapped with British assistance and flown to one of Gaddafi's prisons. Both men say they suffered appalling torture.
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Tony Blair's letter to Muammar Gaddafi in April 2007.The information that flowed back to London as a result of the interrogations was allegedly used to justify control orders imposed on four Libyan dissidents resident in Britain. The information is also alleged to have been deployed as evidence during partially secret court proceedings, during which government lawyers attempted to secure the deportation of several Libyan men. Government lawyers have denied they relied upon information from prisoners in Libya.
Blair's letter from Downing Street was written on 26 April 2007, to inform Gaddafi that the UK was about to fail in its attempts to deport two Libyans allegedly linked to an Islamist opposition organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The following day the court of appeal handed down a judgment in which it said LIFG associates could not be deported to Libya as they could be tortured, regardless of any assurances offered by Gaddafi. Lawyers representing the two men did not know at that time that the intelligence assessments of their clients were based in part on information extracted from victims of the UK-Libyan rendition operations.
Blair began his letter to Gaddafi with the line: "I trust that you, and your family, are well." He then informed the dictator that he believed it to be essential that the court's decision "is not allowed to undermine the effective bilateral cooperation which has developed between the United Kingdom and Libya in recent years … not least in the crucial area of counter-terrorism."
He added: "I would like to add a personal word of thanks for your assistance in the matter of deportation. That support and the excellent cooperation of your officials with their British colleagues is a tribute to the strength of the bilateral relationship which has grown up between the United Kingdom and Libya. As you know, I am determined to see that partnership develop still further."
The same day, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, wrote to a Libyan foreign minister, Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, warning him that there had been references in court "to public statements made by the leader of the revolution", and that this had led to some debate about Gaddafi during the proceedings. Al-Obeidi replied that the decision was deeply disappointing, as Libya had done everything expected of it, including providing answers to all of the questions that had been supplied by the British.
The Guardian put a number of questions to Blair, asking whether he had authorised MI6 involvement in the rendition of the two Libyan opposition figures and their families; why Gaddafi's intelligence officers had been permitted to operate in the UK; and why he had thanked the dictator for his "assistance in the matter of deportation" when this assistance is now alleged to have included the provision of information extracted under torture.
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Abdel Hakim Belhaj is bringing a claim against the British government. Photograph: Francois Mori/APBlair's office responded by issuing the same statement it gave last month following publication of the US Senate intelligence committee report on the CIA's use of torture after 9/11, when the former prime minister was facing accusations that his government had been complicit in those human rights abuses.
The statement said: "For the avoidance of doubt, Tony Blair has always been opposed to the use of torture; has always said so publicly and privately; has never condoned its use and as is shown by internal government documentation already made public thinks it is totally unacceptable. He believes the fight against radical Islamism is a fight about values and acting contrary to those values as in the use of torture is therefore not just wrong but counterproductive."
Blair's letter was written following several years of rapprochement between the UK and Libya, a process that gathered pace after the al-Qaida attacks of 9/11.
The UK can point to a number of achievements that arose from the relationship, including Gaddafi's decision in 2003 to abandon his attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The relationship has also faced severe criticism, however, and not only from those Libyans who suffered under the Gaddafi dictatorship or the human rights groups who had been documenting the abuses perpetrated by his regime over four decades.
When delivering the 2011 Reith lecture, Eliza Manningham-Buller, who was head of MI5 during most of the period that the UK's intelligence agencies were working closely with the Libyan dictatorship, defended the decision to open talks with Gaddafi because it helped to deter him from pursuing his WMD ambitions, but added: "There are questions to be answered about the various relationships that developed afterwards and whether the UK supped with a sufficiently long spoon."
The documents were discovered in abandoned government offices in Tripoli following the revolution that toppled Gaddafi and led to his killing in October 2011. They include secret correspondence from MI6, an MI5 intelligence assessment marked "UK/Libya Eyes Only Secret", and official Libyan minutes of meetings between the two country's intelligence agencies.
The papers show that the UK's intelligence agencies engaged in a series of previously unknown joint operations with the Libyan dictatorship and that information extracted from rendition victims was deployed as evidence during partially secret proceedings in London.
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Blair and Gaddafi during a break in talks held in March 2004. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PAFive men were subjected to control orders on the basis of intelligence assessments that are now alleged to have been based in part on information extracted during Libyan interrogation of the two opposition leaders, Sami al-Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhaj, following the UK-Libyan rendition operations.
Lawyers who represented the men subjected to control orders say that both the high court and the Special Immigration Appeal Commission were kept in the dark about the UK's role in the kidnap of the two men who were providing the information about their clients.
The documents show that in 2006 Libyan intelligence agents were invited to operate on British soil where they worked alongside MI5 and allegedly intimidated a number of opponents of Gaddafi who had been granted asylum in the UK. They also show that British intelligence officers provided information to their Libyan counterparts about a British man of Libyan origin who had lived in the UK since 1981 and had been granted British citizenship in 1994. In September 2003 the UK agencies handed over a file which described this man as "a known figure in the Libyan extremist community in Manchester [who] has previously led a small group of LIFG-affiliated individuals in a dispute at a local mosque over the imam's moderate preaching".This man's address and home and mobile telephone numbers were included in the file. He says that Libyan government officials called him repeatedly, urging him to return to Libya where they said that members of his family faced arrest.
The recovered documents show that MI5 also handed its Libyan counterparts a number of questions about this man, to be put to the two rendition victims.
Eventually, he agreed to travel to Libya, where he was arrested and, he says, tortured. He alleges that he was beaten, suspended from the ceiling, assaulted with electric prods, threatened, subjected to loud music and forced to listen to the torture of others. He was charged with membership of the LIFG, and with providing assistance to the organisation in the UK, and held in prison until March 2010.
The case is being brought by the 12 Gaddafi opponents against MI5 and MI6 as well as the Home Office and Foreign Office. Government departments declined to comment while the litigation is ongoing.
On Thursday an attempt by government lawyers to have the case struck out without admitting liability failed when the high court ruled the allegations "are of real potential public concern" and should be heard and dealt with by the courts.
The government had argued at the high court in London that the five claimants who were subjected to control orders were properly considered to pose a threat to the UK's national security, and that the LIFG was also a threat to the UK.
Lawyers representing MI5, MI6, the Home Office and Foreign Office are expected to appeal against the ruling.

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[Magda Hassan]

The case for a judicial inquiry into Libyan rendition is now undeniable

Richard Norton-Taylor The evidence is clear that MI5 and MI6 were involved in the abduction and torture of Gaddafi's opponents someone must be held to account




Evidence emerged that Libyan dissidents Abdel Hakim Belhaj (above) and Sami al-Saadi had been abducted and rendered to Tripoli in a joint MI6-CIA operation.' Photograph: Francois Mori/AP Saturday 24 January 2015 05.15 AEST





On 16 December 2003, in a private room in the Travellers Club on Pall Mall, a group of MI6, CIA and Libyan intelligence officials had a very long lunch. They were waiting for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to abandon his nuclear weapons programme.

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/world/muammar-gaddafi"]

[/URL]By the evening Gaddafi finally sent a message that he agreed, giving the green light to an astonishing turnaround in relations between Britain and the Libyan dictator. From being a villain the man who supplied arms to the IRA, the man responsible for the Lockerbie disaster, one of whose agents had killed the police officer Yvonne Fletcher in London's St James Square in 1984 Gaddafi immediately became a useful, and profitable, friend.
The door was opened to huge and lucrative British deals with Libya: Shell signed a large gas exploration contract; and BP signed a £15bn oil drilling contract with Libya which became known as "the deal in the desert".
"Dear Muammar," Blair wrote to Gaddafi in June 2007, "you have led a genuine transformation in relations between our two countries in recent years, from which both our peoples stand to benefit."

But Gaddafi's welcome in from the cold was not limited to commerce, and not everyone was to benefit. As Ian Cobain describes in detail in the Guardian, it led to MI6 and MI5's close involvement in the secret abduction of Gaddafi's opponents, connivance (wittingly or not) in their subsequent torture, an active role in their interrogation, and in the intimidation of Libyan dissidents in Britain.
Such actions fly in the face of repeated denials and assurances by ministers to parliament and the public. They would probably have never come to light had they not been revealed in the files of Gaddafi's intelligence chief Moussa Koussa (who became a close colleague of Sir Mark Allen, head of counter terrorism at MI6, later appointed a BP director) that were blown open by Nato-led air strikes in Tripoli in 2011.
The files show that Gaddafi's agents recorded MI5 warning in September 2006 that the two countries' intelligence agencies should take steps to ensure that their joint operations would never be "discovered by lawyers or human rights organisations and the media". Their attempt to keep these activities secret has been shattered, and a bid by UK government lawyers to have claims for damages by 12 Gaddafi opponents (who were allegedly kidnapped and tortured) struck out was dismissed on Thursday by Mr Justice Irwin, who described the allegations as "of real potential public concern".
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Sami al-Saadi was also abducted by MI6 and CIA operatives. Photograph: MARCO LONGARI/AFP In 2010 David Cameron promised a judge-led inquiry into evidence that had emerged in court that MI5 and MI6 were involved in the secret rendition, abuse and torture of UK citizens and residents accused of planning terror plots. An inquiry by former judge Sir Peter Gibson was abandoned after evidence emerged that Libyan dissidents Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi had been abducted and rendered to Tripoli in a joint MI6-CIA operation.
Despite Cameron's promise, he dumped a new inquiry into the hands of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, the very body that previously wrongly concluded that there was "no evidence that the UK agencies were complicit" in such operations.
Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, told MPs in December 2005: "There is simply no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop." After the Libyan renditions came to light, he said: "No foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing at any one time." Government officials, insisting on anonymity, say MI6 was following "ministerially authorised government policy". Blair said he didn't have "any recollection at all" of the Belhaj-Saadi renditions.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...are_btn_tw

[Danny Jarman]

So MI5 abducted people on behalf of Gadaffi?

So it's just an international mercenary brigade on offer to the highest bidder.

[David Guyatt]

While I admire Richard Norton-Taylor as being one of the better journalists, he is wrong to state that Gaddafi was responsible for the Lockerbie disaster - no Libyans were involved in that debacle, the historic evidence is clear on this.

Nor was he in any way responsible for the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher - the US almost certainly were the culprits for this piece of false flag engineering. They wanted to use UK airfields to bomb Libya but understood the public would not allow that. Hence the whole Yvonne Fletcher affair. Personally, I think Thatcher was part of this deal, but this has never been established.

And besides all this, Gaddafi has for many, many years been regarded as a creation of the British and an asset of MI6.

[Peter Lemkin]

While I admire Richard Norton-Taylor as being one of the better journalists, he is wrong to state that Gaddafi was responsible for the Lockerbie disaster - no Libyans were involved in that debacle, the historic evidence is clear on this.

Nor was he in any way responsible for the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher - the US almost certainly were the culprits for this piece of false flag engineering. They wanted to use UK airfields to bomb Libya but understood the public would not allow that. Hence the whole Yvonne Fletcher affair. Personally, I think Thatcher was part of this deal, but this has never been established.

And besides all this, Gaddafi has for many, many years been regarded as a creation of the British and an asset of MI6.

I certainly concur on Lockerbie. But, I thought Gaddafi was a creation of the CIA...but this could be a distinction without a difference....::laughingdog::

...'yours ever'...sounds like a letter to a sweetheart, not another head of state.....
Tony really, REALLY has a lot of explaining to do about a hellova LOT of things.....not the least his circle of friends past and present....and a few wars and dirty deals here and there.....and on and on and on and on.....what a charmer [snake charmer] 'ol Blair is and was.

[Albert Doyle]

The track record of powerful foreign leaders who cooperate with western governments is not good. If you have such a record your life expectancy is statistically limited.

It's nice that Gaddafi's death has left us with deep political tea talk, however the real result is that while the world has gotten rid of Gaddafi by CIA War On Terror-promoted murder the rest of us are now left with aggressive undemocratic military governments looking for their next kills.

[Peter Lemkin]

So MI5 abducted people on behalf of Gadaffi?

So it's just an international mercenary brigade on offer to the highest bidder.

I fear it is much worse than that!....they don't work for just anyone - but for those who are doing the bidding of the ashes of Empire.