Reply #10: CIA Helped Gaddafi Torture Libyan Dissidents, Documents Show

[Octafish]

MI6, too.

From the How Fast Things Don't Change Department:

CIA Helped Gaddafi Torture Libyan Dissidents, Documents Show

September 5, 2011 by Joseph Fitsanakis
IntelNews.org

Back in February, when Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi blamed the popular revolt against him on al-Qaeda, he was ridiculed in the international media. But documents discovered at an abandoned Libyan government office complex show that the Libyan rebels’ supreme military commander was abducted in 2004 by the CIA, which suspected him of links to al-Qaeda. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, also known as Abdullah al-Sadiq, was snatched by a CIA team in Malaysia, and secretly transported to Thailand, where he says he was “directly tortured by CIA agents”. The CIA then renditioned him to Libya, where he says he was tortured routinely until his release from prison, in 2010. In the 1980s, Belhaj was a member of the foreign Mujahedeen summoned by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Upon returning to Libya in the early 1990s, he led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an al-Qaeda-inspired armed organization that unsuccessfully sought to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi. Ironically, Belhaj is now the Tripoli-based military commander of the Libyan National Transitional Council, and says that he wants a full apology from the United States and Britain “for the way he was transported to prison in Libya in 2004”. But the former Mujahedeen is one of several terrorism suspects delivered to Libya by Western intelligence agencies in the years after 9/11, according to Libyan government documents discovered by Human Rights Watch (HRW) workers at the office of Libyan former intelligence chief and foreign minister Moussa Koussa. The documents show that Libya’s External Security Organization maintained extremely close relations with German, Canadian, British, and American intelligence services.

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Admittedly, the documents reveal a degree of cooperation that is far more extensive than generally supposed, as expressed in countless items of correspondence in which British and American spies address their Libyan counterparts by their first names, and refer to routine visits to each other’s offices. In one case, an unnamed official of MI6, Britain’s equivalent of the CIA, tells Moussa Koussa —a senior official in the regime that orchestrated the Lockerbie bombing— that he feels compelled to “offer you my admiration”.

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The documents retrieved from Koussa’s office clearly show that the CIA and MI6 went so far as to provide the Gaddafi regime with intelligence on dissident groups of ex-pat Libyans operating abroad. MI6, in particular, even offered to intercept telecommunications exchanges between anti-Gaddafi dissidents in Britain and elsewhere. It is also revealed in the documents that, after delivering alleged al-Qaeda-linked Libyans to the hands of Gaddafi agents, CIA officers participated in the interrogations deep inside Gaddafi’s complex of secret prisons.

It is these very people, who were systematically tortured by the Libyan dictator, with the approval and support of Western intelligence services, who are now in command of the oil-rich North African country. How will this affect Libya’s relations with the West? The answer to this question depends on which faction within the National Transitional Council will eventually prevail in the months ahead. There is no doubt that the group’s tactical mission —the removal of Muammar al-Gaddafi’s dictatorship— is coming to an end. A discussion will now begin about its long-term strategic vision, which will also shape the country’s foreign policy.

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http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/01-812 /

Well. We have that to look forward to.