AN INDEPENDENT judicial inquiry set up last year will now investigate allegations that British security officers were directly involved in the “extraordinary rendition” of Islamic terror suspects to Libya for torture.
The inquiry, chaired by retired judge Sir Peter Gibson, into alleged UK complicity in torture will be widened to include allegations of intelligence-sharing between British secret services and the Gadafy regime. These developments have come about because of the seizure by human-rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, of documents in Libya, detailing the level of such co-operation.
The inquiry will be depending, crucially, on co-operation from Libya’s new rulers, the National Transitional Council, which has taken control of the files. It is not known how much information the human rights groups managed to glean from the papers.
The UK’s relationship “with the new Libya must deal with problems from the past”, prime minister David Cameron told parliament yesterday, linking the new allegations against MI5 and MI6 with Libya’s past supply of Semtex to the IRA, its involvement in the Lockerbie Pan Am attack and the killing of police officer, Yvonne Fletcher. “Significant accusations have been reported today that under the last government relations between the British and Libyan security services became too close, particularly in 2003,” said Mr Cameron, who was roundly praised by MPs from all sides for helping to orchestrate Col Gadafy’s downfall.
Mr Cameron has been walking a diplomatic tightrope since the new allegations against MI5 and MI6 emerged. If proven, they could leave the UK open to significant compensation actions and major international embarrassment, as it has denied all along being involved in rendition. The prime minister repeatedly praised the work of the two agencies, pointing out that the allegations relate to 2003, “just two years after 9/11”. He said those allegedly sent to Libya with British involvement were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was then linked to al-Qaeda, though not now.
Responding to Conservative MP Julian Lewis, who said British involvement would be “shameful, if true”, Mr Cameron said: “I don’t think that any of us should rush to judgment. We should remember the situation as it was in 2003.”
The current military commander for Tripoli of the provisional government, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, was among those captured and sent to Libya by the CIA. Mr Belhadj says he was tortured for seven years after being seized in Bangkok. His wife suffers daily pain from the work of Col Gadafy’s torturers, though he did acknowledge that their brutality had not been witnessed by MI6. Its officers questioned him afterward: “What happened to me and my family is illegal. It deserves an apology,” he told the BBC.
The prime minister said Mr Blair had been right to bring Col Gadafy into the diplomatic arena after persuading him to get rid of weapons of mass destruction and abandon his nuclear weapons programme, but added that the policy had gone too far.
Rejecting charges of hypocrisy from a Labour MP because the UK was still selling arms to Libya up until March, Mr Cameron said he had acted to remove Col Gadafy after he turned on his own people. “That was the trigger to act and I’m glad we did,” he said.
Former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw said it was Labour’s “ consistent policy” that it would not be “complicit in torture”, adding that it was entirely right that the allegations be investigated by the inquiry.
However, Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie said he was losing confidence in the ability of Judge Gibson to get to the truth, warning that he had voluntarily decided not to have his own investigator. Mr Tyrie also claimed that the judge would not investigate prisoner transfers that did not pass through the UK.