Libya : A no lie zone

[Peter Lemkin]

Yup, he was OUR DICTATOR~~~!....one of a very long and ugly list of them WWII to present....I'd hate to have to enumerate them all. I believe Bill Blum has, and it is a very, very long list of ugly, brutal dictators we 'owned' in part - more often whole. That's how we 'export democracy' :mexican:

[Jan Klimkowski]

British intelligence to Gaddafi:

"I wanted to ensure that you had the same script."

:dancingman: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Secret Libyan files claim MI6 and the CIA aided human rights violations

Intelligence helped Gaddafi regime track and apprehend dissidents, according to files seized from Tripoli offices

Cherry Wilson guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 September 2011 23.42 BST

British and US intelligence agencies built up close links with Muammar Gaddafi and handed over detailed information to assist his regime, according to secret files found in Libyan government offices.

The documents claim that MI6 supplied its counterparts in Libya with details on exiled opponents living in the UK, and chart how the CIA abducted several suspected militants before handing them over to Tripoli.

They also contain communications between British and Libyan security officials ahead of Tony Blair's visit in 2004, and show that British officials helped write a draft speech for Gaddafi when he was being encouraged to give up his weapons programme.

The discovery was made by reporters and members of Human Rights Watch in the private offices of Moussa Koussa, the former foreign minister and head of Libyan intelligence, who defected to Britain in February. He is now believed to be in Qatar.

According to the documents, Libya's relationship with MI6 and the CIA was especially close between 2002 and 2004, at the height of the war on terror. The papers give details of how No 10 insisted that the 2004 meeting between Blair and Gaddafi took place in his bedouin tent, with a letter from an MI6 official saying: "I don't know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is that the journalists would love it."

They also show how a statement made by Gaddafi during the time in which he pledged to give up his nuclear programme and destroy his stock of chemical and biological weapons was put together with the help of British officials. A covering letter states: "For the sake of clarity, please find attached a tidied-up version of the language we agreed on Tuesday. I wanted to ensure that you had the same script."

Other letters seem to reveal that British intelligence gave Tripoli details of a Libyan dissident who had been freed from jail in Britain. One US document stated the CIA was in a position to deliver a prisoner into the custody of Libyan authorities.

The papers, which have not been independently verified, also suggest the CIA abducted several suspected militants from 2002 to 2004 who were subsequently handed over to Tripoli. Human Rights Watch has accused the CIA of condoning torture.

"It wasn't just abducting suspected Islamic militants and handing them over to the Libyan intelligence," said Peter Bouckaert, director of Human Rights Watch's emergencies division. "The CIA also sent the questions they wanted Libyan intelligence to ask and, from the files, it's very clear they were present in some of the interrogations themselves."

Foreign secretary, William Hague, said he could not comment on security matters. Further documents found at the British ambassador's residence in Tripoli, and obtained by a Sunday newspaper, concerned the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. A memo written in January 2009 by Robert Dixon, head of the North Africa team at the Foreign Office, and sent to then foreign secretary David Miliband, warned that Gaddafi's ministers said there would be "dire consequences" for the UK-Libya relationship in the event of Megrahi's death in custody.

[Magda Hassan]

Libyan Rebels Listed by US State Department as Terrorists

NATO leaders are guilty under US code of providing material support to terrorists.

By Tony Cartalucci
"Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. To violate this paragraph, a person must have knowledge that the organization is a designated terrorist organization (as defined in subsection (g)(6)), that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorist activity (as defined in section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act), or that the organization has engaged or engages in terrorism (as defined in section 140(d)(2) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989)." -USC § 2339B. Providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations.

September 03, 2011 "Land Destroyer" - - In March 2011, the London Telegraph reported that Libya's rebels had direct ties to Al Qaeda and that both leaders and fighters had spent time in both Iraq and Afghanistan combating US troops. The article titled, "Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links" featured Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, who had been captured by the US after fighting Americans in Afghanistan, returned to Libya, and released under a bargain for Hasidi and his Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) militants to abandon extremism and become productive members of society. Quite obviously, and with the US, UK, and NATO's help, Hasidi and his men went back on this bargain and are now sowing murder and mayhem across Libya.

The New York Time more recently reported in an article titled, "Exiled Islamists Watch Rebellion Unfold at Home" that LIFG has "renounced Al Qaeda and are part of the mosaic of rebel fighters united under the umbrella of the Transitional National Council, the opposition leadership that the United States formally recognized as Libya's legitimate government." Of course, "renouncement" is exactly what these very same men did to be released from Qaddafi's prisons in the first place before immediately taking up arms and laying waste to the nation. The New York Times also notes that exiled LIFG leader Abu Sohaib, currently being harbored in London, is unable to return to Libya because he and LIFG is a listed terrorist across the Middle East and throughout most of Europe, including the UK. His LIFG fighters are noted as having "combat experience in Iraq or Afghanistan," and that they are part of the "social fabric of eastern Libya," namely Benghazi, Tobruk, and Darnah in a region often referred to as Cyrenaica.

Image: Taken from a US West Point study, these graphs created by data obtained in Iraq clearly show that Libya's eastern region, and the cities of Darnah and Benghazi in particular, provided by far more militants found fighting US troops in Iraq than any other nation, including Saudi Arabia. An apt summary of the report can be found at Tarpley.net. (click image to enlarge)

....


To get a clearer picture of just how much of the "social fabric of eastern Libya" these Al Qaeda LIFG fighters make up, a study from West Point US Military Academy indicates that this region produced more foreign fighters per capita found in Iraq than any other nation including Saudi Arabia. The vast majority of these fighters came from Darnah and Benghazi, the latter being the epicenter of the current Libyan rebellion. The report, explained in detail by geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley, proves just how understated the New York Times article is in portraying these terrorists as "part of the social fabric of eastern Libya." The facts prove quite clearly that terrorism is the social fabric of eastern Libya.

Just this week, the UK Independent provided its readership with a watered down headline that reads, "Rebel military chief says he was tortured by CIA." The article indicates that the current rebel leader, Abdulhakim Belhaj (aka Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi) is in fact an LIFG founding member, with combat experience in Afghanistan against the Russians, omits that he was also involved in fighting US troops there in 2001, but does mention that he was held by the CIA, then the Libyan government before taking command of NATO-backed rebels in Libya. The Daily Beast reports in an article titled, "Libya's Powerful Islamist Leader," that Belhaj was in fact, face-to-face with Osama Bin Laden back in the 1980's, and that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) is listed by both the U.S. State Department and the British Home Office as an international terrorist organization.

Image: A screenshot taken directly from the US State Department website showing the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) clearly listed as a foreign terrorist organization. This is important, as US Code prohibits providing material support to listed terrorist organizations. With revelations of Al Qaeda and LIFG fighters leading the Libyan rebellion with NATO-members' full military, financial, and diplomatic support, attempts are being made to plea ignorance as to the true nature of the rebels. Listed below LIFG, is MEK, an Iraqi/Iranian group also being armed and supported by the US. (click on image to enlarge)

....


With the corporate media's help, Belhaj/al-Hasidi and his men are being portrayed as reformed terrorists despite the fact that they are still LIFG fighters and LIFG itself is still listed as an international terrorist organization. And while many will applaud the corporate media for coming forward with this information, it should be noted that Pepe Escobar first broke this story on Russia Today, and the US and British propaganda outlets have merely been forced to address the growing public awareness of who these "pro-democracy" rebels really are and what role the US and British governments have had in betraying their people by providing material support for men who literally killed US and UK troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the 10 year "War on Terror."

According to US Code Section 2339A & 2339B, the leaders of NATO, along with the US, UK, and French governments, are clearly guilty of providing a listed terrorist organization with material support in the most egregious, overt case since the code was written. The staggering scale of training, arming, and providing air support for Libyan Islamic Fighting Group militants, listed by the US State Department itself as a terrorist organization, all done criminally under the guise of "international law" rubber stamped by the contrived UN and bolstered with support from the equally contrived International Criminal Court, may be partially why more people are unable to understand the scope of criminality involved in NATO's intervention in Libya.

A similar situation exists within Iran, where another terrorist organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) are being covertly armed and aided in fighting the Iranian government. US policy makers are fully aware that organizations like LIFG and MEK have US blood on their hands. In fact, their only concern is how using such organizations will appear publicly and how such perceptions might threaten their agendas. In the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution report, "Which Path to Persia?" we can see clearly the thought process that goes on behind supporting terrorist organizations. Brookings' only concern is how to remove MEK terrorists from the US State Department list (listed just below LIFG) so they can be supported more overtly in a Libyan-style military intervention.

"Potential Ethnic Proxies," page 117-118 (page 130-131 of the PDF): "Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group's champions contend that the movement's long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group's supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK's greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.



Despite its defenders' claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacksoften excused by the MEK's advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership's main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations."

....

US policy makers, working directly for Wall Street and London corporate-financier interests, clearly have no qualms over using or supporting terrorism, with perception management being their only concern. We see this diabolical methodology, precisely articulated in "Which Path to Persia?" now being executed across Libya verbatim. It looks as if there was not enough time to get LIFG off various international lists of terrorist organizations as Brookings had hoped to do with MEK, and instead a concerted effort by the corporate-media and NATO members is being made to downplay the reality that the US, British, French and Qatari governments are openly sponsoring terrorism. Look for similar narratives as seen in Libya to be used in both Syria and Iran - with militant terrorists portrayed as hapless protesters being oppressed by a brutal government, before a full-scale military insurrection followed by a US led military intervention.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e29023.htm

[Bernice Moore]

http://www.rferl.org/content/libya_qadda...17125.html
Anti-Qaddafi Forces Threaten Attack; Papers Show CIA Links

[Peter Lemkin]

Human Rights Watch has uncovered hundreds of letters in the Libyan foreign ministry proving the Gaddafi government directly aided the extraordinary rendition program carried out by the CIA and the MI6 in Britain after the 9/11 attacks. The documents expose how the CIA rendered suspects to Libyan authorities knowing they would be tortured. One of the most prominent suspects rendered to Libya was an Islamic militant named Abdelhakim Belhaj, who is now the military commander for the Libyan rebels. At the time of his capture in 2004, Belhaj was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a group that had ties to al-Qaeda. We speak to Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, who helped find the documents in Tripoli, and Gareth Peirce, a well-known British human rights attorney who has represented numerous Guantánamo prisoners as well as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Guests:
Gareth Peirce, one of Britain's best-known human rights attorneys. She is author of Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice.
Peter Bouckaert, Emergencies Director at Human Rights Watch.
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AMY GOODMAN: We're on the line in Tripoli with Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch. He's the emergencies director. He's in the capital of Libya. Let's talk about these latest revelations, Peter. How did you uncover these hundreds of letters in the Libyan foreign ministry proving the Gaddafi regime has been working for years with the CIA in the United States, with MI6, British intelligence, in Britain?

PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, we were going around about four, five days ago to the different intelligence headquarters in Tripoli to see what the state of their archives was and to make sure that they were not destroyed or looted, as had happened in other cities, because they do contain a lot of important evidence. So I went to the Libyan spy agency, the external intelligence building. I was the first foreigner to arrive there, and spent about five or six hours going through their archives, looking for information about the rendition program. And we stumbled upon a set of several files in a room relating to the CIA renditions and the U.K. relationship, as well, with Musa Kusa, the spy chief. There were many, many more documents there, but we focused mostly on those, just because once we started reading them, we were stunned by the closeness of the relationship between Musa Kusa and both the CIA and the MI6, the heads of clandestine services.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain everything, or as much as you can, of what you saw. Start with the CIA and exactly the relationship and how far back it went, that you could see in these documents, with Gaddafi.

PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, the documents that we found date mostly from a period in 2003 and 2004, when the CIA and MI6 were dismantling Gaddafi's weapons of mass destruction program and reestablishing their intelligence relationship with the Libyan government. But we found many documents relating to the rendition andto the capture and rendition of Islamist suspects abroad. The CIA was offering to capture and render Libyan Islamists to the Gaddafi government. And then they were sending the questions they wanted to be asked to the Gaddafi government.

We also found many documents which just show how close their relationship was. And one of the documents I found is a fax dated Christmas Day 2003, in which the head of MI6 clandestine servicesit starts, "Dear Musa," and then expresses regret that Musa is not joining him for Christmas lunch. And it's signed, "Your friend," and then the name of this person. It just shows a relationship which went way beyond the professional into the intimate, really, with a man who is known for his brutality and his direct role in repression, a man who probably knows a lot more about the Lockerbie bombing and other dark chapters in Libyan history than anybody else.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Why was itis it the case, Peter, that in Libya it was more shocking, this extraordinary rendition program, than, for example, elsewhere in the region?

PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, the Libyan government is known for its brutality, and the people who were rendered, we went to visit many of them in 2008 in Abu Salim. And they talked about the torture they have suffered. But we should remember that the United States continues to remain in close touch with similar abuses by agencies. They certainly have a similarly close relationship with the Egyptians, with the Yemens, with the Jordanians, and for many years with the Uzbeks, using them to debrief people that they have captured and rendered, under torture. So it's not a unique situation in Libya. It's just that because of the fall of Tripoli, we were able to gain access to documents that the CIA and the MI6 certainly would rather keep in the dark, where they belong.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter, before we turn to Gareth Peirce, I wanted to ask you specifically about Abdullah Kanchil, the rebel negotiator, head of the [NTC], the National Transition Committee negotiating team. How did he end up being brought back to Libya?

PETER BOUCKAERT: I'm notare you talking about [Abdelhakim] Belhaj, the Tripoli chief?

AMY GOODMAN: Ah, yes, yes.

PETER BOUCKAERT: Yes. So, Belhaj became the commander of the fighters in Tripoli and is now the chief of the fighters in Tripoli because of the important role he played in the fighting. He is a person who, in the past, has received military training in Afghanistan. So he and his fighters led the battle for Tripoli.

I think it is important to note that he and many other members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group have renounced terrorism a long time ago and have renounced their previous relationship with al-Qaeda. I met Belhaj a few days ago, after we found his own rendition document. And he expressed, in what is in my opinion, a sincere commitment to a new Libya which is democratic and respectful of human rights. And it is important that we try to incorporate people who make that commitment into the new Libya and only exclude those who really have blood on their hands or who have been involved in terrorist activities, not people who just have a conservative Islamist belief.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, thank you very much for being with us, speaking to us from Tripoli. He's Human Rights Watch's emergencies director.

As we turn now to Gareth Peirce, one of Britain's best-known human rights attorneys. She has represented numerous Guantánamo prisoners. As well, currently she is representing Julian Assange. She is author of a new book, Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice.

As you investigate and hear about these hundreds of documents that show the very close relationship between the CIA, MI6 and extraordinary rendition to Libya under Gaddafi, who is well known for torture, what comments do you have, Gareth Peirce? Welcome.

GARETH PEIRCE: It's not a surprise that they exist. It's important that they've been found, and it's extremely important that they be preserved. They confirm what's always been known, that the government of this country and these intelligence services, from the beginning, after 9/11, had an intention to present a picture, a narrative, that there was an Islamic worldwide conspiracyand sadly, a false narrativethat brought in every resistance movement, every legitimate resistance movement suffering under dictators such as Gaddafi. And part of that narrative, in relation to Libya, has in fact come to fruition now to show its falsity, which is that Gaddafi was indeed a brutal dictator. There was indeed a right and a duty for dissidents to resist. And amongst those dissidents, there werethere was a group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

What is perhaps the logical conclusion of that is the hypocrisy that we now discover, to find that, on the one hand, we were saying here, officially, there is no possibility of deporting dissidents to Libya who have been given sanctuary in the U.K., because it's a regime that will torture, at the same time attempting to present a narrative that all those dissidents were linked to al-Qaeda and unlawfully reintroduce internment to lock them up indefinitely without trial, yet, we now discover, simultaneously engineering the rendition of one of the members of that group, Belhaj, to go to Libya to be tortured, which we knewwe knew; it was our state policy that we knew Libya did that to its dissidentsand then to facilitate members of the intelligence services going here to interrogate him, specifically, as I read in yesterday's newspaper, he says, to confirm for them that there were links which were always denied between the LIFG and al-Qaeda. And therefore, it looks like a complete construct to achieve evidence for a narrative that the government was determined existed, whether or not it did.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Gareth, in response to Belhaj's request or demand for an apology, the British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Britain was interestedthat this was an accusation against the previous government and that Britain was now, in fact, focused on the future of Libya. Could you comment on that?

GARETH PEIRCE: All, sadly, that the coalition government, the new government, has done is to appoint an inquiry into British complicity into torture in the past, but that inquiry isn't an open, independent inquiry with an independent judge-led panel. It's a Cabinet Office review, which gives the Cabinet Office the ultimate say-so in the evidence produced. It's beenit's been determined it will be almost entirely in secret, in relation to intelligence services activity. And those who have been tortured, the detaineesit's called the Detainee Inquirywill not have any role to play in it.

It is absolutely critical that this not be put to rest. It's critical that, if it's investigated, it be done publicly. Every organization in the world that has experience in how to eradicate torture insists upon two essential ingredients: first, that all the data that reveals torture is publicly known and understood; and secondly, that those on whose watch it happened, who were responsible, be brought to account. And neither of those preconditions is in existence in the construct that is present in Britain at the moment for investigating complicity, and therefore, what happened to Belhaj is central to understanding. Every bit of it should be made known, for his sake and for the sake of the rest of the world, and for the sake of the future, if we are going to stop this.

And be sure, we're still continuing. Even if we are inhibited now in such direct complicity in torture, we are nevertheless, day to day, in contact with, feeding questions to intelligence services, so-called, around the world that are at the behest of regimes whose major interrogation device is torture. This is what we do as part of our daily diplomatic bread and butter for our perceived strategic and economic interests. And we haven't stopped. And people are held daily, including British citizens, in arbitrary detention, without access to lawyers. And we do not object. We put our noses in the trough, and we feed from it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Gareth Peirce, unlike the Cameron administration, the Obama administration says they are unlikely to conduct their own public inquiry. This is from the New York Times_, saying that, "Early in his presidency, [President] Obama rejected the idea of a broad inquiry into rendition, torture, secret detention and other reported practices in the American campaign against terrorism, saying he wanted to look forward." So I wanted to go to one of the British citizens you're talking about, your own client, Gareth Peirce, Moazzam Begg, who was held at Guantánamo for more than seven years, a British citizen born and raised in Birmingham. He was seized in February of 2002 by the CIA in Islamabad. We went to London to talk to his">Moazzam Begg when he was finally released, five years later. He talked about his experience.

MOAZZAM BEGG: So that when I was eventually given into American custody and taken over to Kandahar, the treatment that I received through the processing was probably the most dehumanizing process, I think, that anybody has ever endured in recent times, which included having soldiers sit on me and then many other detainees, several of them pushing down on my head and my legs and my back, ripping open my clothes with a knife, which I could feel slicing, the cold blade against the back of my legs and back, and then photographs being taken of me naked, being shackled, being spat at, photographs of me shaven and unshaven, photographs of soldiers abusing me and other detainees, and derisive remarks about being a terrorist, being a murder, being Muslim scum, things like this, dogs barking, and then eventually being taken over to an FBI agent who looked rather strange with his FBI cap on, while I'm shivering there naked, and him asking me when was the last time I saw Mullah Omar, when was the last time I saw Osama bin Laden, which was a standard question that they asked of every detainee.

AMY GOODMAN: Moazzam Begg was held in U.S. detention for, oh, around seven years, held at Guantánamo for years. Can you talk about what happened to him when he came out, Gareth Peircehe was never charged with a crimeand why he was taken, what you understood? He said he underwent more than 300 interrogations, not to mention death threats and torture.

GARETH PEIRCE: He's one casualty out of, sadly, thousands, tens of thousands, who were viewed in thatwhat Edward Said rightly condemned as a cartoon-like depiction of the world, of good and evil, the West against Islam, in which there has been, and to a large extent still is not, any comprehension of the plurality, the variety, the richness, the depth of each other's entities, either national or as individuals or as groups. And that has persisted, that simplistic view of the world in which the enemy has to be eliminated, the enemy has to be gotten. And if this does just keep going in the way it is, then we will be in perpetual war, not in the quest of perpetual peace, but in terms of hatred and elimination.

And LibyaI don't know precisely the reaction in the United States, but in Britain, as with the other uprisings in the Arab world, has been one of surprise as each has happened, and that each has somehow been lit by an unexpected spark in an unexpected tinderbox, without any comprehension that the history of those nations has been one of the worst kind of oppression in which we, as governments, yours and mine, have constantly not just backed the wrong horseit isn't that simplistic a choicewe have backed and encouraged leaders of those countries who have been monsters, who have oppressed their people, and we have categorized the resistance, the dissent, as the enemy, as Islamic extremism, radicalism, that has to be eliminated.

If ever there was a moment for a revolution in our thinking, this is it. We have not understood, for 10 years, much of what the world has been about. We have waged war, and we are continuing to wage endless war in simplistic terms, domestically against our own Muslim citizens, against others, and against huge swaths of countries, now moving, for instance, to the Horn of Africa. We cannot continue in this permanence of combative aggression in our thinking, let alone our actions. And this is an opportunity, I would have thought, that Libya, in what's being found there, which is essential historic documentation of how we arrived at this passit's essential it be grappled with. And if Obama has said no to an inquiry so far, then this is the moment for at least other worldwide organizationsthe U.N. Committee Against Torture, the European Committee for the Prevention of Tortureall of those organizations to say, "If you, you countries, are not going to have your own inquiries, we are going to have an inquiry, and we are going to investigate. And those countries which have endorsed the right for us to enter and investigate, we're going to do so."

AMY GOODMAN: Gareth, how would taking on Julian Assange, in these last months, his newest attorney, fit into the work that you've been doing, your human rights work? Can you talk about the latest in his case, as he awaits a judicial decision about whether he will be extradited to Sweden?

GARETH PEIRCE: I'm sure, as you know, that the element of the case that exists in the English courts, and for which I was asked to represent him, relates to a narrow issue: a request from Sweden to the U.K. I think, in relation to the bigger picture, in fact, just as a personal comment, one could say that WikiLeaks, the whole policy or potential of the right to the world to know, in fact, becomes not irrelevant, but when you can go to the British embassy in Tripoli and find the data, if you can go to Musa Kusa's office in Tripoli and find the data, and that that is put out into the open, and we regard it as essential to know, and the world isn't falling apart at these revelations, in that senseembarrassment extreme, I'm surebut does anyone contest that having more information isn't essential for us to put the world in a better state? I don't make an equivalency between every revelation of everything intended to remain secret. I don't do that. But I do say knowledge and understanding is essential for the world we inhabit.

AMY GOODMAN: Gareth Peirce, we will leave it there. We thank you so much for being with us, author of Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice. She is one of Britain's most well-known human rights attorneys, has represented numerous Guantánamo prisoners, as well as Julian Assange. She was speaking to us from London.

[Peter Lemkin]

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In Libya, rebel forces say Muammar Gaddafi's stronghold of Bani Walid is ready to come under the National Transitional Council's authority despite pockets of resistance. Meanwhile, rebel troops say they've advanced about five miles towards Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte in heavy fighting today.

Reuters reports the U.S. government has urged Niger to detain senior officials from the Gaddafi government who it believes crossed into the country in a convoy from Libya. Niger officials say the convoy carried several senior members of Gaddafi's government, but gave no indication that Gaddafi himself was among them.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has uncovered hundreds of letters in the Libyan foreign ministry proving that Gaddafi's government directly aided the extraordinary rendition program carried out by the CIA and MI6 in Britain after the 9/11 attacks.

Peter Bouckaert is the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.

PETER BOUCKAERT: Among the files we discovered yesterday at Musa Kusa's office is a fax from the CIA dated May 2004 in which the CIA informs the Libyan government that they are in a position to capture and render Belhaj, who's now the head of the Tripoli Military Council to Libya. And that operation actually took place. He was captured by the CIA in Asia and put on a secret flight back to Libya, where he was interrogated and tortured by the Libyan security services.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The documents expose how the CIA rendered suspects to Libyan authorities, knowing they would be tortured. One of the most prominent suspects rendered to Libya was an Islamic militant named Abdelhakim Belhaj, who is now the military commander for the Libyan rebels. At the time of his capture in 2004, Belhaj was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a group that had ties to al-Qaeda.

PETER BOUCKAERT: Our concern is that when these people were handed over to the Libyan security, they were tortured, and the CIA knew what would happen when they sent people like Abdulhakim into the hands of the Libyan security services. We must remember that these are Islamic militants who were first in the hands of the CIA. So if they wanted to interrogate them themselves, they could have done so. But instead, they sent them to a security service which, even in the U.S. State Department's own public reporting, is known for its torture and abuse.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch says the letters from the CIA and MI6 were found in the offices of the former head of Libyan intelligence, Musa Kusa.

PETER BOUCKAERT: What's remarkable is, first of all, the frankness of these files, they sent questions to the Libyan security services to ask to the suspects they have rendered, but also the very friendly tone. They thank Musa Kusa for the crate of oranges and dates that he sent back with the intelligence agent who came to visit. And all of thethese are letters, "Dear Musa" letters, to a man who is infamous in Libya for his involvement in repression. Musa Kusa was Gaddafi's enforcer, together with Senussi, the intelligence chief.

AMY GOODMAN: To find out more about these letters, we're going directly to Peter Bouckaert in Tripoli on the telephone, Human Rights Watch's emergencies director. But first, before we go to these remarkable letters that were found, Peter Bouckaert, just if you could talk about the latest in Tripoli right now.

PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, the situation in Tripoli is still in the process of stabilizing. When Tripoli fell to the rebels, there was no water and electricity, and the fuel situation was very difficult. But we see daily improvement, and it's quite clear that the rebels have been preparing carefully for the restoration of the services in Tripoli and also for improvements in the security. There still are significant problems with the treatment of African migrant workers, many of whom are being detained on the street, but we do see some [inaudible], that they are trying to address this situation and end these widespread attacks against African migrants.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could also talk about the latest you hear, though it's not in Tripoli, the news of leaders within Libya's rebel movement believing that Muammar Gaddafi has fled the encircled town of Bani Walid in a southbound military convoy to Niger and Chad. What do you understand is happening right now?

PETER BOUCKAERT: Well, there are intense negotiations taking place, led by Moussa Ibrahim, the former spokesperson of government, who is in Bani Walid. We have no indication that those directly involve Muammar Gaddafi, but they certainly involve a lot of his inner circle. According to the information we have, some senior officials fled to Niger in the last few days, but we have no indication that Muammar Gaddafi himself was in that convoy. And we hope that if he does flee the country, he will be promptly arrested and handed over to the International Criminal Court.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Peter Bouckaert, you've mentioned that some air-to-surface missiles have gone missing in Tripoli in recent days. Can you say a little bit about that?

PETER BOUCKAERT: Yes, Human Rights Watch has been going around in the last week, trying to locate those various weapon storage facilities in Tripoli, because during the war, the Gaddafi forces knew that their main compounds will be bombed by NATO and destroyed, so they moved a lot of their weaponry into private companies and compounds, which makes it difficult to locate them. And we were very concerned that a lot of these weapons will fall in the wrong hands.

Yesterday, I found a warehouse which had been packed with surface-to-air missiles, including some very modern surface-to-air missiles. We've seen these weapons are floating around everywhere, but we found some very recent acquisitions of Russia's most modern SA-24 surface-to-air missiles, and they have all been looted in the last few weeks, which creates some very serious concerns about the safety of commercial aircraft in the region, because those surface-to-air missiles, especially the SA-24, are capable of shooting down an airplane flying as high as 11,000 feet.

But secondly, we're also very concerned that a lot of warehouses with explosive weapons, such as mines and tank shells and artillery shells, are completely insecure. I just came from a warehouse where I literally opened the gate to drive in and found a building packed to the ceiling with anti-tank and anti-vehicle mines, completely insecure and unguarded.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Peter, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee yesterday, Michigan Republican Mike Rogers, expressed concerns to the White House that al-Qaeda might actually capture some of these weapons. And he said, "We need to be doing more to secure these weapons systems now," and, "There is nobody better who can get their hands on this stuff, account for it and render it safe" than the U.S. Can you comment on that?

PETER BOUCKAERT: Yes, I was quite surprised to see that there are no international forcesnot forces, but organizations or individuals on the ground in Tripoli trying to secure these very dangerous weapons. We have been warning the U.S. and other Western countries that these weapons are floating around all over the country, and every time a city falls, they end up being looted. So we have expected a more forceful response to try to secure these weapons. But unfortunately, it's now very late in the day. Every facility we go to where there were surface-to-air missiles, they're gone. And what is left behind is World War II-era weaponry. And according to some of the rebels I've spoken to who have been to these warehouses after they first fell to the rebels, those surface-to-air missiles were still there when the government of Gaddafi fled. So they have been looted; they have not been removed by the Gaddafi forces.

[Magda Hassan]

Walter Fauntroy, Feared Dead in Libya, Returns Home -- Guess Who He Saw Doing the Killing?




by Valencia Mohammed

Former U.S. Congressman Walter Fauntroy, who recently returned from a self-sanctioned peace mission to Libya, said he went into hiding for about a month in Libya after witnessing horrifying events in Libya's bloody civil war -- a war that Fauntroy claims is backed by European forces.
Fauntroy's sudden disappearance prompted rumors and news reports that he had been killed.
In an interview inside his Northwest D.C. home last week, the noted civil rights leader, told the Afro that he watched French and Danish troops storm small villages late at night beheading, maiming and killing rebels and loyalists to show them who was in control.
"'What the hell' I'm thinking to myself. I'm getting out of here. So I went in hiding," Fauntroy said.
The rebels told Fauntroy they had been told by the European forces to stay inside. According to Fauntroy, the European forces would tell the rebels, "'Look at what you did.' In other words, the French and Danish were ordering the bombings and killings, and giving credit to the rebels.
"The truth about all this will come out later," Fauntroy said.
While in Libya, The former congressman also said he sat down with Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi for a one-on-one conversation. Gaddafi has ruled Libya since 1969, when he seized power in a military coup.
Fauntroy said he spoke with Gaddafi in person and that Gaddafi assured him that if he survived these attacks, the mission to unite African countries would continue.
"Contrary to what is being reported in the press, from what I heard and observed, more than 90 percent of the Libyan people love Gaddafi," Fauntroy said. "We believe the true mission of the attacks on Gaddafi is to prevent all efforts by African leaders to stop the recolonization of Africa."
Several months ago, Gaddafi's leadership faced its biggest challenge. In February, a radical protest movement called the Arab Spring spread across Libya. When Gaddafi responded by dispatching military and plainclothes paramilitary to the streets to attack demonstrators, it turned into a civil war with the assistance of NATO and the United Nations.
Fauntroy's account could not be immediately verified by the Afro and the U.S. State Department has not substantiated Fauntroy's version of events. Fauntroy was not acting as an official representative of the U.S. in Libya. He returned to Washington, D.C. on Aug. 31.
When rumors spread about Fauntroy being killed he went underground, he told the Afro in an interview. Fauntroy said for more than a month he decided not to contact his family but to continue the mission to speak with African spiritual leaders about a movement to unify Africa despite the Arab uprisings.
"I'm still here," Fauntroy said, pointing to several parts of his body. "I've got all my fingers and toes. I'm extremely lucky to be here."
After blogs and rumors reported Fauntroy had been killed, the congressional office of Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced on Aug. 24, that she had been in touch with authorities who confirmed Fauntroy was safely in the care of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Inside his home, Fauntroy pulled out several memoirs and notebooks to explain why he traveled to Libya at a time when it was going through civil unrest.
"This recent trip to Libya was part of a continuous mission that started under Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he gave me orders to join four African countries on the continent with four in the African Diaspora to restore the continent to its pre-colonial status," Fauntroy said.
"We want Africa to be the breadbasket of the world," he said. "Currently, all the major roads in every country throughout Africa lead to ports that take its natural resources and wealth outside the continent to be sold to the European markets."
Meanwhile reports from Tripoli are coming in.
It seems in the last two weeks, rebel fighters have fired more bullets into the air to express their excitement than were shot during the assault on Tripoli earlier in August. But away from "jubilant" crowds we meet those who are not so pleased.
Abdulrakham lives in Tripoli's Abu Slim district, which has historically been pro-Gaddafi. When the rebels arrived, his sister was badly injured. She is still in hospital in Tunisia.
Abdulrakham does not want to show his face on camera and insists on a hidden location for the interview. He says the revolution has brought much fear in its wake.
"There is no peace. There is no safety in the city. We do not let our children outside when it's dark. We are afraid. We always wait for something bad," he tells RT. "When Gaddafi was here, at least we didn't have to sleep awake, like we do now."
Abdulrakham says he also wanted change and a brighter future for his country, but not this way.
"People are dying on both sides," he continues. "The city's been destroyed and no one cares! Do they seriously think they changed it for the better? Don't lie to yourself just look around! Is this what you wanted?"
And what is around is a scene of widespread destruction and social chaos. The badly damaged buildings matched by the rising stench of garbage and decomposing bodies. Armed youngsters roam the streets, barely old enough to understand that what they carry are weapons, not toys.
Many shops, schools, and hospitals are closed, while the city's cemeteries are growing bigger.
http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=628601

[Magda Hassan]

Rebels ask leader of UK's Libyan Jews to run for office

By GIL SHEFLER, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
08/23/2011 01:05

Raphael Luzon tells 'Post' that rebel council chief told him post-Gaddafi gov't should include women and Jews.

Talkbacks (35)


The day after the fall of Tripoli to the rebels, the leader of a Libyan-Jewish Diaspora group said he was offered by the emerging ruling power to run for office in free elections in that country.

Raphael Luzon, the head of Jews of Libya UK, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that opposition leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil recently invited him to return to his country of birthand participate in the political discourse.


"A week ago I received an [invitation] from the chief of the rebels," he said referring to Abdul Jalil, a former justice minister and current chairman of the rebel council in Benghazi.

"They proposed for me to take part in one of the parties because they would like it to be open to all people including women and Jews."

The Benghazi-born Jew, whose family was forced to flee Libya following a pogrom in 1967, said he was waiting for further developments before he gave a definitive answer.

"I said I would accept it once I see it is real democracy and the proposal is offered," he said. "If I do it I do it for one matter: the historical matter. The first Arab country that proposed that a Jew run in a free election."

Jews have lived in Libya since ancient times. At its peak during the 1930s the Jewish community in Libya numbered 25,000 but persecution by Italy and Germany during World War II and a series of state-sponsored pogroms after Libya became independent in 1951 took a toll and its members immigrated mostly to Israel, Italy and the UK. The last Jew in Libya left the country almost a decade ago.

From his base in London, Luzon has been in contact with Muammar Gaddafi's regime over the past decade representing the demands of Jewish Libyans abroad. He visited his country of birth several times and met with the Libyan dictator privately twice.

If he were to return to Libya, Luzon said the reconstruction of the war-torn country and the restitution of Jewish assets which were confiscated by the Libyan regime to their rightful owners would top his political agenda.

"As you know we left there 82 synagogues, land and property and I would like to take care of this because it belongs to the Jewish community of Libya," he said.

Luzon dismissed fears that the northern African country might emerge as a hotbed for radical Islam.

"No country in northern Africa has a tradition of Islamic extremism," he said. "They're never Islamist. Perhaps there will be a small party in Libya but different than the ones in Egypt."

The 57-year-old Luzon also did not rule out the option that Israeli Jews of Libyan descent would be free to visit their country of origin similarly to other northern African countries.

"If it will be democratic there will be no reason not to visit, like in Tunisia and Morocco," he said.

He emphasized that all this depended on the outcome of fighting in the capital, which is still raging between the rebels and forces loyal to the Libyan dictator, who has so far evaded capture.

"First they have to get rid of Gaddafi, rebuild the country and decide which direction to take," he said.
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishN...?id=234992

[Magda Hassan]

G8 pledges $38bn to Arab states as IMF recognises Libya

The money agreed is far higher than the original amount pledged in May
Finance ministers from the G8 group of industrialised countries have pledged nearly $40bn (£25bn) to several Arab countries to help with reconstruction and moves towards democracy.
The money will go to Egypt and Tunisia, which overthrew their autocratic leaders, as well as Morocco and Jordan.
In addition, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recognised Libya's post-Gaddafi leadership.
The G8 - the world's richest countries plus Russia - is meeting in Marseille.
In addition to the pledge of $38bn from G8 countries, the IMF is extending further funds.
"The IMF can actually extend an approximate total of $35bn for the region and particularly with the focus on those that are oil-importing countries because, as we know, they are the ones that are suffering the most from the high commodity prices, whether it's fuel or prices of food," said IMF head Christine Lagarde.
Morocco and Jordan, both monarchies, have seen some protests but have weathered the upheavals in the Arab world by offering constitutional reforms.
The total of $73bn in pledges nearly doubles the amount originally pledged by the G8 and lenders including the World Bank at an earlier summit in May.
The IMF decided to recognise Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) as the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people, replacing fugitive leader Col Muammar Gaddafi. The move paves the way for the IMF to offer aid to the new authorities.
The IMF will send a team to Libya as soon as security permits.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14866198

[Magda Hassan]

No surprises of course as we documented this even before things happened officially but it is even on Faux ewes now.

U.S. Boots on the Ground in Libya, Pentagon Confirms

By Justin Fishel
Published September 12, 2011
| FoxNews.com

Despite repeated assurances from President Obama and military leaders that the U.S. would not send uniformed military personnel into Libya, four U.S. service members arrived on the ground in Tripoli over the weekend.
According to Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby, the four unidentified troops are there working under the State Department's chief of mission to assist in rebuilding the U.S. Embassy.

A U.S. embassy emblem is seen on a broken door during a visit for the press in the vandalized U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, Sept. 12.



Kirby noted the embassy in Tripoli was badly damaged during the conflict between Muammar Qaddafi's forces and the rebels.
Two of the military personnel are explosive-ordnance experts who will be used to disable any explosives traps left in the embassy. The other two are "general security," according to Kirby.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland assured reporters Monday that the four individuals are not in Libya to fight.
"When the president made his commitment to 'no boots on ground' ... obviously that had to do with entering into the fray between the Qaddafi forces and the Libyan freedom fighters, and that's not what these guys are engaged in," Nuland said.
Kirby also made clear these troops are in no way part of a military operation on the ground. They are armed, however, if for some reason they need to protect themselves.
The troops are only expected to be there for a short while. After the assessment of the embassy is complete, they are expected to leave.
Obama assured Americans in March when the bombing campaign over Libya began that there would be no boots on the ground. From the East Room of the White House on March 18, he said: "The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya."
Several days later at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., he said: "I said that America's role would be limited, that we would not put ground troops into Libya, that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners. Tonight, we are fulfilling that pledge."
Since then, U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity have acknowledged the CIA has had a small number of so-called "spotters" on the ground to assist in the NATO mission. It's also well known that other foreign governments have sent special operations forces to fight on the ground with the rebels.
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Fox News the fact that four troops are on the ground is "no big deal," considering the embassy had been trashed.
"You need this kind of expertise to make it safe for diplomats to return," Bolton said.
Kirby wouldn't say if there were plans to send more U.S. troops in the future.




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/...z1XmMNLfm9