Following up on a previous post titled Libyan Rebels Claim To Find Evidence That CIA Helped Capture Libyan Dissidents and Used Regime For Renditions and Torture:
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an organization that discovered hundreds of archived documents in Tripoli, said the documents provide evidence of US and UK complicity in torture crimes in Libya during the rule of Col. Muammar Gaddafi. From Human Rights Watch: “Among the files were documents confirming that both the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the United Kingdom’s MI6 sent terrorism suspects to Libya for detention – despite Libya’s notorious record for torturing prisoners.” The documents appear to show that Libyan cooperation with both the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s MI-6 agency under Gaddafi was closer than had been acknowledged in the past. According to the New York Times, the CIA sent terrorism suspects to Libya for interrogation at least eight times.
The CIA communications that HRW saw were drafted when George W. Bush was president. The documents included flight schedules—as well as lists of questions that were to be asked of the terrorism suspects. They also show that CIA agents were sent to interrogate the suspects who were being held in Libyan custody. HRW said, “This confirms Human Rights Watch’s earlier findings of US and UK complicity in the torture of suspects in foreign countries, published in 2004. The US claims that it has not transferred any detainees to Libya since 2007.”
The New York Times reported that a British panel that has been investigating the country’s intelligence agency’s behavior toward terrorism suspects plans to examine the “new accusations of close cooperation between British spies and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government…” The Times also said that it appears unlikely that the Obama Administration will conduct its own public inquiry because Obama had rejected the idea of a broad inquiry into Bush Administration torture, rendition, and detention programs earlier in his presidency when he said that he wanted our country to look forward—and not backward. That decision did not sit well with human rights advocates.
SOURCES
Discovered Files Show U.S., Britain Had Extensive Ties with Gaddafi Regime on Rendition, Torture (Democracy Now)
Secret Intelligence Documents Discovered in Libya: Files Show Intimate Relationship Between CIA, MI6, and Libya (Human Rights Watch)
The United States’ “Disappeared”: The CIA’s Long-Term “Ghost Detainees” (Human Rights Watch)
British Panel to Examine Libya Rendition Reports (New York Times)