An insincere apology

In 2004, Britain helped the CIA kidnap Libyan dissident Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his family from Thailand. Belhaj and his pregnant wife were rendered to Libya, where they were imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime. Belhaj was tortured. MI6 knew and wanted this to happen. Now, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has purportedly "apologised" for the government's actions:

Theresa May has issued an unprecedented apology for Britain’s role in the “appalling” treatment of a Libyan dissident and his wife, who were victims of a rendition operation mounted with the help of MI6.

The prime minister wrote to Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife, Fatima Boudchar, to apologise unreservedly on behalf of the government for its failings over the case and missed opportunities to end their ordeal.

The attorney general, Jeremy Wright, read out May’s letter in the Commons as he announced that Boudchar, who was pregnant when the couple were kidnapped, would receive £500,000 compensation for the UK’s role in her treatment. Belhaj has neither sought, nor received, a financial settlement.

[...]

In her letter, May admitted the UK should have done more to reduce the risk that the couple could be mistreated, and had wrongly missed opportunities to help them once they were held in the prisons of the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

She acknowledged that Britain should have realised sooner that its allies were involved in unacceptable practices, implying criticism of Libya for torture and the CIA’s practice of rendition.

If you believe May, this was all a terrible misunderstanding, poor British spies not really understanding what they were doing and what horrors they were sending Belhaj to. Bullshit. They knew all along, about both American and Libyan torture. They visited Belhaj in the prison where he was being tortured and questioned him. Pretending now that they didn't know about it is just Britain minimising its crimes, as usual.

An apology was what Belhaj was seeking, and he may be satisfied with this. But we should not be. The criminals who arranged his rendition, who knowingly sent him to be tortured in exchange for political favour with Libya, are still free. No-one has been held to account. And unless there is accountability for these crimes, there is no incentive for them not to be repeated.

But no doubt then we'll see an equally insincere apology and compensation from an establishment which has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

New Fisk

Donald Trump has shown himself to be the American version of Gaddafi in his behaviour towards Iran and the nuclear deal

Britain funds concentration camps in Libya

Britain's racist, anti-refugee government is bankrolling refugee concentration camps in Libya:

British-funded refugee camps in Libya are implementing the indiscriminate and indefinite detention of asylum seekers in the conflict-riven country, the UK government’s official aid watchdog has warned.

In a report published on Friday, the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact expresses concern that UK aid to Libya risks causing unintended harm to migrants and could prevent them from reaching a place of safety. It also criticises ministers for apparently decided on the funding plan without studying the human rights implications in a country struggling to contain its long-running civil war.

“In Libya, where the operating environment severely constrains choices, the UK has identified some programming options with the potential to improve some of the conditions for migrants in detention,” it finds. “However, we are concerned about the risk that UK aid is contributing to a system that prevents refugees from reaching a place of safe asylum.”

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“While reducing the number of deaths at sea is vital, we are concerned that the programme delivers migrants back to a system that leads to indiscriminate and indefinite detention and denies refugees their right to asylum,” the report says.

The latter is the point. The UK - and other racist EU nations - do not want to fulfil their obligations under the Refugee Convention. But they can't publicly repudiate it without damaging their reputations, so instead they quietly fund people in other countries to run concentration camps on their behalf. Its immoral and hypocritical. But that's what the UK (and EU) apparently stand for now.

Something to hide

Back in June, the UK's Crown Prosecution Service decided that they wouldn't be charging anyone over MI6's complicity in the kidnapping, rendition and torture of Libyan dissident Abdul Hakim Belhaj. There's obvious suspicion that they were lobbied into making that decision by the British government. But oddly, the cabinet Office doesn't want to talk about it:

The previous month Reprieve submitted a request to the Cabinet Office under the Freedom of Information Act asking whether any of its ministers or staff had met or corresponded with the CPS about the investigation.

The Cabinet Office said it would not answer the question as it “could neither confirm nor deny whether any relevant information is held”. The department judged that this refusal was justified in the public interest to protect the enforcement of the law.

As well as running the prime minister’s office, mandarins in the Cabinet Office advise the PM and other senior ministers on intelligence matters. They also co-ordinate the government’s response to sensitive issues relating to the UK’s spies.

The natural conclusion is that the Cabinet Office feels it has something to hide on this, something which would not survive public scrutiny. And the obvious thing they have to hide is that they unlawfully interfered in a prosecution decision to protect themselves and the establishment from facing justice for their crimes.

The establishment protects itself

In 2004, Britain helped the CIA kidnap Libyan dissident Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his family from Thailand. Belhaj and his pregnant wife were rendered to Libya, where they were imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime. Belhaj was tortured. MI6 knew and wanted this to happen. And yet the British government has spent over £600,000 trying to prevent him from seeking justice through the British courts:

The government has spent at least £600,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to prevent a civil case being brought against it by a husband and wife who allege that British intelligence was complicit in their detention, rendition and torture.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the extraordinary lengths to which the government is going to prevent the civil case against it, former home secretary Jack Straw, and former MI6 spy chief Sir Mark Allen coming to court.

[...]

[I]nformation released under FOI shows that by 10 September last year the government had spent £355,000 on internal legal advice and £259,000 on external advice as it sought to have the case dropped. Of this, £27,000 was spent on advice relating to Straw and £110,000 on advice relating to Allen.

The FOI data reveals that the government has been paying as much as £250 an hour to two senior barristers involved in defending the action. A number of junior barristers have also been charging between £45 and £120 an hour.

Given that the figures are 10 months old, there is speculation that the total cost of fighting the case – before it even comes near a court – could be well in excess of £10m.

Belhaj isn't seeking damages - he is seeking an admission of involvement and an apology. But actually admitting what everyone knows - that they are complicit in rendition and torture - would be deeply embarrassing to the British political establishment, not to mention expose senior members to (well-deserved) criminal prosecution. So instead they're spending public money to prevent that. Just another example of how Britain's criminal establishment governs in its own interests, not those of the people.

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Not just a crime - a mistake

In 2004, Britain kidnapped Sami al-Saadi in Hong Kong and illegally rendered him to Libya. The same year, they helped the CIA do the same to Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his family in Thailand. Both men were tortured by the Libyan regime, and it is clear that MI6 knew this would happen. As a result, MI6 is being investigated by the police for conspiracy to torture.

But the British rendition of these men wasn't just a crime - it was also a mistake:

A secret UK-Libyan rendition programme in which two Libyan opposition leaders were kidnapped and flown to Tripoli along with their families had the effect of strengthening al-Qaida, according to an assessment by the UK security service, MI5.

Prior to their kidnap, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi had ensured that their organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), focused on the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi, the classified assessment says. Once handed over to the Gaddafi regime, their places at the head of the LIFG were taken by others who wanted to bring the group closer to al-Qaida.

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Two years after MI5 made this assessment, Libi announced the LIFG had formally joined forces with al-Qaida. He became a leading member of the merged organisation and is believed to have orchestrated a series of suicide bomb attacks across Afghanistan, including one in 2007 that killed 23 people at Bagram airfield north of Kabul during a visit by then US vice-president Dick Cheney. Libi was killed in a drone strike the following year.

Naturally, the British spies kept quiet about their terrible, criminal mistake. The only reason we know about it is because they gave a copy to Gaddafi's torturers, which was found after their overthrow. Also in those documents was a list of 1600 questions the British wanted the Libyan "interview team" to ask Belhaj and Saadi while they were being tortured. That should be of great interest to the police.

Britain spies on lawyers

And while we're on the subject of torture and rendition: it seems the British government is eavesdropping on lawyers for a man they rendered to torture in Libya:

Lawyers acting for a prominent Libyan dissident who was tortured after he was seized in a joint British and US operation have said they believe their communications are being intercepted by GCHQ, the government's electronic eavesdropping agency.

They are seeking an urgent injunction from the investigatory powers tribunal, which hears complaints about the activities of the security and intelligence agencies. They lodged a complaint after revelations about GCHQ's mass surveillance programmes, leaked by Edward Snowden, were published in the Guardian.

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The government's lawyers have declined to give written assurances that communications between Belhaj and his lawyers have not been intercepted.

Which is basically an admission of guilt. After all, it wouldn't exactly be hard for them to say "no, we're respecting the law, and the principle of legal privilege, and not spying on people who are suing us in an effort to advantage our case". The fact that they refuse to say that tells us all we need to know - and makes a mockery of any claim that Britain's victims will receive justice from British courts.

New Fisk

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Compensation for rendition

Two big pieces of news around extraordinary rendition today. Firstly, the European Court of Human Rights has ordered Macedonia to pay 60,000 euro in compensation to Khaled el-Masri for their role in his kidnap and rendition. El-Masri was a German tourist whose name was similar to that of a suspected terrorist. On that basis alone he was kidnapped and unlawfully detained by Macedonian security forces, before being bundled onto a US jet and flown to a black site in Afghanistan, where he was tortured. When the US realised its mistake, they dumped him by a roadside in Albania, with no way of getting home. Its the first time the ECHR has held a European country legally responsible for its role in a rendition, and it sets a precedent for them to do the same for countries like Sweden, Italy and the UK, who rendered people, and Poland, which hosted a CIA torture centre.

Secondly, the UK has settled with Sami al-Saadi, the Libyan dissident they rendered back into the clutches of the Gaddafi regime. Al-Saadi and his family were abducted from Hong Kong and flown back to Libya. His family were released after two months, but al-Saadi was tortured for six years. The UK has paid out £2.2 million for this, probably to avoid the threat of discovery, which could result in the release of classified information (such as, oh, the name of the government Minister who authorised the operation, and the names of those who planned it, allowing them to be held politically and criminally liable). While there's still a criminal investigation, I have no faith in the British police's ability to properly investigate those in power. The establishment protects its own, even if they have to spend millions of pounds of public money to do so.

While compensation is owned to the victims, real justice will only come from criminal prosecutions of those responsible. Sadly, that's unlikely to happen - power is hardly going to hold itself to account. Which means that we'll see a repeat of this crime. Only when Ministers and officials know in no uncertain terms that it is criminal, that they will be identified and punished, that they will go to jail and their friends and families will know that they are the sorts of vicious sociopaths who actively collude in torture, will this stop.

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Gaddafi

So, Gaddafi is dead, apparently lynched after being captured in Sirte. This is traditionally what happens to dictators - witness the brutal death and post-mortem hanging of Mussolini. But that doesn't make it right. Criminals, even those who have committed crimes on a vast scale like Gaddafi, should be given a fair trial, and if convicted, imprisoned. Summary execution, show trials, and state-sanctioned murders are the tools of tyrants, not of a democratic society based on justice.

Another smoking gun

For the past five years, the UK's spies have been fighting a desperate rearguard action against mounting evidence that they are complicit in the overseas torture of terrorist suspects. Whenever new evidence has come to light, they have robotically repeated the same mantra: "the UK does not participate in, encourage or condone torture or inhumane treatment". Blair's "policy on liaison with overseas security and intelligence services in relation to detainees who may be subject to mistreatment" has already shown that to be bullshit, but the revolution in Libya has shown us new depths of depravity from the UK's spies. They weren't just exploiting foreign arrests, waiting outside the torture chambers for the beating and drilling to finish so they could ask questions now the suspect had been softened up - they had their own rendition program, and actively sent people to Libya to be tortured:

Evidence that British intelligence agencies mounted their own "rendition" operation in collaboration with Muammar Gaddafi's security services has emerged with the discovery of a cache of Libyan government papers in an abandoned office building in Tripoli.

A secret CIA document found among the haul shows that the British and Libyans worked together to arrange for a terrorism suspect to be removed from Hong Kong to Tripoli – along with his wife and children – despite the risk that they would be tortured. The wording of the document suggests the CIA was not involved in the planning of the rendition operation, but was eager to become engaged during its execution and offered financial support.

Other papers found in the building suggest MI6 enjoyed a far closer working relationship with Gaddafi's intelligence agencies than has been publicly known, and was involved in a number of US-led operations that also resulted in Islamists being consigned to Gaddafi's prisons.

One of those Islamists is now a senior commander in the transitional government's military. He was seized in Bangkok after MI6 tipped the CIA to his location, rendered to Libya, and tortured. During his torture, he was interrogated by British agents. He's now demanding an apology, and may pursue legal action. I wish him luck. While I don't approve of his politics, torture is wrong, and those responsible for it need to be held accountable. But civil action isn't enough - torture is illegal under both UK and international law and is rightly regarded as a crime against humanity. Those responsible for it, those who developed this policy and conspired to procure it, need to be prosecuted. And until they are, we should regard the UK as a rogue nation.

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Last days of Gaddafi?

Over the weekend, the Libyan civil war - which had been stalemated for months - suddenly sprang to life, with a rebel assault on Tripoli. This morning, it looks like that assault has been successful, with rebel forces just 3km from the city centre. Two of Gaddafi's sons have been captured, and his bodyguard has reportedly surrendered. So, we may be looking at the last days of the Gaddafi regime.

I don't think anyone is going to be shedding nay tears over that. But the question now is what happens next? If the rebels are successful, they'll face the task of building a new, democratic Libya from the ground up - a difficult task, made more difficult by having a country full of guns and people who have seen that you can use them to gain power. There's a risk, inherent in all violent revolutions, of a prolonged civil war, or the replacement of one dictator with another.

The international community needs to help here. We've supported the rebels in war; now we need to support them in peace as well, to help them build a free and democratic Libya.

Escalation in Libya II

First we had the "military advisors" - foreign mercenaries - to help the Libyan rebels. Now we have the arms shipments:

The US plans to send $25m worth of non-lethal equipment to the rebel opposition in eastern Libya, in a move likely to further entangle the west in the two-month-old civil war.

The proposal to send surplus Pentagon equipment, including vehicles, medical supplies, protective vests, binoculars and radios, follows Italy's decision to join Britain and France in sending military advisers to the Libyan opposition and a French pledge to intensify air strikes.

This is of course illegal. The UN imposed an arms embargo on Libya through UN Security Council Resolution 1970 [PDF]. It forbids

the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya... of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, and technical assistance, training, financial or other assistance, related to military activities or the provision, maintenance or use of any arms and related materiel

There are limited exceptions for flak jackets and vehicles for use by aid agencies and media, but they certainly don't cover arming and equipping a rebel army.

The US voted for this resolution. Now, a little over a month later, they want to piss all over it. So much for international law.

Escalation in Libya

When the UK started bombing Libya, it assured its people that that was all they would do, and that there was no possibility that British troops would end up being deployed. As usual, they lied. They're now sending a team of "military advisors" to help the rebels on the ground. Which is of course how Vietnam began.

But apart from fears of escalation, the deployment violates Parliament's authorisation for military action, which was specifically to "protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack in Libya and to enforce the No Fly Zone". While that has no legal weight, it carries a lot of political weight. Worse, it also violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 [PDF], which authorised military force for the same purpose. But this isn't even arguably about protecting civilians, its nakedly intervening on one side in a civil war - something the UN very specifically did not authorise.

There are two problems here. The first is about the perversion of UN resolutions to serve the west's geopolitical aims - something which will result in a further weakening of the UN and erosion of its power to do good. The second, specific to the UK, is about lies. The Cameron government is continuing Blair's habit of going to war on false pretences, using lies to obtain Parliamentary (and therefore, they hope, public) approval. The UK public is already highly suspicious of this war, even given a fairly decent moral case. Lies will simply cement that suspicion.