SCOTLAND YARD has opened a criminal investigation into secret British intelligence rendition operations that resulted in leading Libyan dissidents being abducted and flown to Tripoli where they were subsequently tortured in Muammar Gadafy’s prisons.
The announcement came as police and the director of public prosecutions for England and Wales, Keir Starmer, said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any individual MI5 (British security service) or MI6 (British intelligence) officers following lengthy investigations into allegations of British complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The new investigation is to focus on Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, who lodged complaints with the police last November after the chance discovery of a cache of classified documents in an abandoned Libyan government office laid bare the role MI6 played in their rendition.
Mr Saadi was detained in Hong Kong in 2004 and then forced on to a flight to Tripoli with his wife and four children in an operation MI6 mounted in co-operation with Gadafy’s intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa. Mr Saadi says he suffered years of torture.
Mr Belhaj was detained in Bangkok along with his pregnant wife after an MI6 tip-off and allegedly tortured by US agents for several days before being flown to Tripoli, where he says he was tortured and detained for several years. His wife, who was detained for several months, has not spoken publicly about the manner in which she was treated.
British officials have not sought to deny the involvement of MI6 in either rendition. Instead, they have stressed that each resulted from what they describe as “ministerially authorised government policy”, raising the possibility that the new inquiry will require the questioning of ministers of the last Labour government.
In addition, police and the crown prosecution service announced they were establishing a joint panel that would examine other allegations of British complicity in torture and rendition which have been levelled by a number of former Guantánamo inmates and others detained in the so-called war on terror. – (Guardianservice)