A top-secret operation by British agents in Libya to stop terrorists being smuggled into Europe by people-traffickers has been shut down after an assault by government militia.

The notorious Nawasi Brigade stormed the operations base in Tripoli of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) – dealing a devastating blow to efforts to prevent terror attacks in Europe, highly placed sources in Libya have told The Mail on Sunday.

Hard-line jihadis and gangsters who make up the militia are now the nominal coastguard security – but, in fact, are working with people-smugglers for a cut of their vast income.

1. Terrorists hide among boats: Criminal gangs of people-traffickers have transported vast numbers of migrants – each paying thousands of pounds – on dangerously overladen boats crossing from Libya into Italy. The authorities in Europe are powerless to stop the human flood and they fear terrorists are hidden among the new arrivals

Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj – head of the Government of National Unity recognised by the United Nations – is powerless to defy the Nawasi Brigade, one of three militias that control Tripoli.

Three NCA intelligence officers had made dozens of reconnaissance visits over many months to the port complex in the city, where they had been working alongside police in the search for jihadis on a terror watch-list.

The NCA had planned to set up a large-scale operation involving British personnel and using cutting-edge surveillance technology later this year. The agency had recently applied to Libya’s Ministry of the Interior for the green light to start its counter-terrorism deployment in the country full-time.

Its mission had become even more urgent after the Manchester bombing in May, in which Salman Abedi killed 22 concert-goers. British-born Abedi was of Libyan origin and is believed to have received terrorist training in the country.

Security services fear that terrorists are making their way into Europe hidden among migrants – they take flimsy boats from Libya to reach Italy, from where they can travel elsewhere on the Continent. Already this year more than 100,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean.

2. UK counter-terror op shut down by militia: Officers from Britain’s NCA had been watching for terrorists in Tripoli

While many will plead asylum as refugees from war or human-rights abuses, the vast majority are economic migrants, according to the United Nations. Two of the terrorists who took part in the November 2015 Paris attacks, in which 130 people were murdered, slipped into Europe using forged passports, hiding among the flood of refugees from the war in Syria.

Coastguard officials, angered by the loss of an opportunity to work closely with the British, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The NCA team came over to Tripoli after the Manchester bombing and agreed that we might have been able to prevent that atrocity if our joint operations HQ had been up and running.’

The Nawasi Brigade gunmen stormed the port complex in Tripoli on July 19. Arriving in armoured vehicles, they threatened police staff with machine-guns, shouting: ‘Get out! Get out! We have taken over!’

More than 70 police officers were forced to leave immediately, and forbidden to take any files or equipment. A senior police officer who witnessed the attack said: ‘We know these men. They work with the people-traffickers and make money from smuggling African migrants on to boats. They call themselves protectors of public morals, but they are nothing but a bunch of gangsters, opportunists.

‘Some of them wore combat gear. Others, the religious ones, wore jalabiyas, the traditional robes. They are powerful in Tripoli and the government is weak and hopeless. We informed Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, but he said he knew nothing, he had been out of the country. In reality he is terrified of the Nawasi Brigade and the other militias.’

But their operation was shut down by the Nawasi Brigade, the armed militia acting as the official security using government badges

The NCA has protested to the European Union Borders Assistance Mission to Libya (EUBAM).

A delegation of three senior officers from Britain had been working with Libyan police chiefs to draw up plans for a base where they would use state-of-the-art technology to face-match terrorists on their wanted lists with those in Libyan detention centres, and intercept phone calls between traffickers. On previous visits, the officers have combed through files to detect terrorists among the criminals arrested for trafficking of drugs, people and fuel, which are all rife along the coast of Libya.

The NCA officers have had access to traffickers and illegal migrants at detention centres, where they were able to interrogate them and assess the scale of the threat to Britain.

British intervention in the human-trafficking crisis in Libya has never been more needed. Last week, Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu warned that UK border checks were a weak point for national security at a time when 600 extremist plots were being investigated.

Pictured are the badges the armed militia were using

Italian authorities, infuriated by Libya’s inability to halt the migrant crisis, which has seen 600,000 people clambering on to its shores in the past four years, are already taking matters into their own hands.

They called a halt to EU plans to train Libyan coastguards and return six patrol boats they have held since the 2011 revolution, and instead sent a warship bristling with weapons to drop anchor off the Libyan coastline last month.

Italy’s Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti has threatened to send up to five more warships. But Italy’s proactive measures are not being welcomed, least of all by the police force run out of the coastal headquarters by the Nawasi Brigade. A source said: ‘We are totally against this aggressive action by Italy, our former colonial masters. We are told that al-Sarraj asked for their assistance but if so he has acted alone, disempowering us at the very time that our offices have been taken over by criminals.’

General Khalifa Haftar, the self-styled head of the Libyan National Army, who leads an alternative national government in eastern Libya, immediately issued orders to all of the country’s naval bases ‘to confront any marine unit entering Libyan waters without permission of the army’.

In the chaotic aftermath of Libya’s 2011 revolution, the hastily formed National Transitional Council invited in the armed militias which helped to defeat dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and gave them government salaries and status. There are currently about 250,000 armed former revolutionaries operating in the country.

3. How route from North Africa to Italy is soft underbelly of Europe: With virtually nothing to stop people-traffickers operating in Libya, the way is left open for terrorists from across the Middle East to pay for passage on boats sailing towards Italy, from where they can vanish into any part of Europe

In March, the Nawasi Brigade was tasked by al-Sarraj’s Presidential Council to separate warring factions of two other militias in Tripoli. Muslim Brotherhood factions currently control the Central Bank, which receives the country’s oil revenue and disburses government funds.

The European Council on Foreign Relations, an international think-tank which conducts independent research and promotes debate within European countries, warns that migration through Libya is increasing.

Matthia Toaldo, senior policy fellow for the Middle East and North Africa, said: ‘Policies in Libya are facing stalemate. It is a dismal picture, though a significant component was to build up the capacity of Libya’s coastguard.’

This optimistic note has now been snuffed out by the crushing of the NCA’s initiative.

An NCA spokesman said: ‘The NCA does not routinely confirm or deny operational activity.’

An EU spokesman said: ‘We are aware of this incident.’

Paris bombers smuggled into Europe hidden among Migrants Panic: Spectators at the France and Germany match in Saint Denis flee after the attack Terrorist: Bomber al-Mahmod The terrorists who have hidden among migrants to get into Europe include Ahmad al Mohammad and a man travelling under the name ‘M al-Mahmod’, suicide bombers at the Stade de France stadium on the night of the November 2015 Paris attacks. The two Iraqi members of Islamic State had used forged passports to cross into Greece, and days later were in central Europe, going on to link up with IS cell members in France. Dozens of jihadis pretending to be migrants have been arrested or have died while planning or carrying out attacks in Europe. The route into Greece has now been largely closed off, forcing terrorists to look instead to the crossing from North Africa. Advertisement

The ruthless gangs behind a £6bn a year trail of misery

By Michael Burleigh, Historian and Terror Expert

More than 600,000 migrants have reached Italy by sea from Libya since 2014, with 12,000 dying during the crossing.

Every stage of this involves criminals – Europol estimates people-smuggling is worth £6 billion a year to Arab and North African criminal gangs.

For extortionate fees, they shepherd migrants from Chad, Eritrea or Niger – not to mention Bangladesh and Pakistan – to Libya, and then send them out to sea, either to drown or to be picked up and deposited in Italy, where the Mafia get involved.

In Italy’s Calabria, the powerful and violent ’Ndrangheta has siphoned off £36 million from more than £90 million disbursed in aid to migrant reception centres.

More than 600,000 migrants have reached Italy by sea from Libya since 2014, with 12,000 dying during the crossing

The less powerful Sicilian Cosa Nostra has come to an arrangement with Nigerian gangs in return for a cut of money they earn from drugs and prostitution in the island’s capital Palermo. Now a third group of criminals has joined the feast, except this time in an effort to stop migration at source in Libya – which explains why the numbers of migrants fell dramatically by 50 per cent in July and then by 86 per cent in August.

Italy is the only European government with close connections with the UN-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli. They have used this connection to operate a crafty sleight of hand, which enables Italy to pay money to the Libya’s ministries of defence and interior.

This is, in turn, disbursed to two militias which control the Libyan town of Sabratha, a major centre for people-smuggling.

Their role, for which they are generously paid, is to intimidate local smugglers and to run jails in which would-be migrants are confined.

The Italians have also imposed restrictions on the humanitarian charities which, they say, are acting like an offshore taxi service for people-smugglers.

Finally, the Italians have joined the French, Germans and Spanish in paying the governments of Chad and Niger to beef up their own border controls, something which seems to have worked with Niger’s neighbour Burkina Faso.

The Italians’ pragmatic approach appears to be working – for them at least.

The human-traffickers are said to be moving to Morocco, from where there has been a sudden spike in people-smuggling to Spain.

Additional reporting: Ned Donovan