By Patrick Cockburn
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
"....Will the close co-operation on what amounted to farming out torture by the CIA and MI6 to Muammar Gaddafi and his interrogators be forgotten in the rush of events in Libya? Western intelligence services presumably hope so. The fragile and divided Libyan authorities may think twice before quarrelling with the very organisations whose aid over the past six months enabled them to defeat Gaddafi.
I saw Abdelhakim Belhaj, the head of the military council controlling all militia brigades in Tripoli, last week and asked him about how he was arrested in Malaysia, tortured in Thailand, and sent back for more torture and imprisonment in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. Given the Libyan rebels' reliance on Nato air strikes, I thought it likely that Belhaj, a founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group which had been accused of links to al-Qa'ida, would avoid talking about his rendition. Instead Belhaj showed that he was still a very angry man. He said he was considering suing those responsible.
It is good that Belhaj is not willing to cover up what happened to him, and that his story is confirmed by documents in Tripoli proving the cosy relationship between MI6, the CIA and Gaddafi. It should help to discredit the way in which the world's most disgusting and oppressive dictators have been able in the decade since 9/11 to claim that anybody opposing them was an Islamic fundamentalist linked to al-Qa'ida. By 2003 the government of Uzbekistan boiled to death two prisoners and still got a US grant for its security services.....
It now turns out that several of the rebels who played a crucial role in overthrowing Gaddafi, and have been lauded as freedom fighters by Western leaders, were among those savagely tortured by MI6's friends in Abu Salim. This might just begin to turn the tide against the systematic mistreatment of prisoners which has become such a hallmark of the security world since 9/11."
No comments:
Post a Comment