The fires of Libya’s revolution were still burning when, in September 2011, a handful of militiamen and human rights activists made an extraordinary discovery in an outpost of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s main intelligence agency, the External Security Organisation (ESO).

Britain apologises for 'appalling treatment' of Abdel Hakim Belhaj Read more

On shelves around the walls of one office, inside one folder after another, were hundreds of pages of secret communications between the ESO, the CIA and MI6, and between Gaddafi and Tony Blair.

These papers showed beyond doubt that all three agencies had been involved in the kidnap and torture of two of Gaddafi’s opponents, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi. Moreover, they had also been involved in the kidnap and severe mistreatment of the men’s wives, Fatima Boudchar and Karima al-Saadi, and Saadi’s four children, the youngest aged six. Boudchar was four and a half months pregnant when she was kidnapped.

The two families had been abducted in Bangkok and Hong Kong and flown to Tripoli in separate “rendition” operations 17 days apart, in March 2004. In between, Blair had paid his first visit to Tripoli, embracing Gaddafi and declaring that they were making “common cause” against al-Qaida and terrorism.

These documents nailed as a lie the mantra that British government officials repeated whenever allegations of involvement in post-9/11 human rights abuses were raised: that the government did not “participate in, solicit, encourage or condone” the use of torture.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sami al-Saadi and his daughter Khadija. Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP

Three years after the two rendition operations – and six years before the discovery of the secret files in Tripoli – Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, told MPs that media reports about the abuses were “conspiracy theories”, and that “there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition”.

The discovery in the ESO’s outpost put a stop to such denials. They showed that MI6 had provided the intelligence that allowed the CIA to abduct Belhaj and Saadi, the two leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. The LIFG was an Islamist militia that had rejected al-Qaida’s global agenda, focusing instead on the overthrow of Gaddafi, and had been something of an ally of the UK until the 9/11 attacks in New York turned the global geopolitical order upside down.

Copies of the Tripoli papers were handed to two London law firms, and claims brought against not only the foreign office and MI6, but also against Straw and Sir Mark Allen, the former head of counter-terrorism at MI6.

The government announced that the Libyan renditions would be among the cases investigated by the Gibson inquiry, established the previous year to examine allegations of UK’s involvement in human rights abuses during counter-terrorism operations.

A few months later, Scotland Yard announced it too was investigating MI6’s involvement in the rendition operations. At this point, the government shelved the Gibson inquiry, maintaining that it could not continue its work while a police investigation was under way. Instead, the intelligence and security committee, a group of MPs and peers said to provide oversight of the intelligence agencies, would examine the matter. The committee is yet to report.

It was clear from the outset that the main suspect in the police inquiry would be Allen, whose name appeared on a number of the letters that had been faxed to Gaddafi’s head of intelligence, Moussa Koussa.

Notoriously, Allen had sent a fax in which he congratulated Koussa on the “safe arrival” of Belhaj. “This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over recent years.” He added that “amusingly”, the CIA – which had provided the aircraft for one of the rendition operations – had asked that MI6 channel all requests for information from Belhaj through them.



“I have no intention of doing any such thing,” he said. “The intelligence … was British. I know I did not pay for the air cargo. But I feel I have the right to deal with you direct on this.”



Boudchar gave an interview to the Guardian in which she explained how that air cargo’s safe arrival was achieved. She and her husband had been taken off a flight in Bangkok and led to a detention centre somewhere within the airport. While her husband was being tortured, she was hooded and chained to a wall for five days, given water, but starved.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fatima Boudchar and her son Abderrahim outside parliament in London. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Her captors were three masked Americans, two men and a woman. “They knew I was pregnant,” she said. “It was obvious.” She was forced to lie on a stretcher before the flight to Tripoli, and bound, head to foot, with sticky tape. “My left eye was closed when the tape was applied, but my right eye was open. It was agony.”

The flight took 17 hours. Throughout the journey, Boudchar could hear her husband grunting in pain: he had been shackled in a way that ensured he could neither lie nor sit. On landing they were driven separately to prison. Belhaj says the torture began immediately. Boudchar was freed shortly before giving birth.

Saadi’s eldest daughter, Khadija, told the Guardian how her family had also been forced on to an aircraft. She was 12 years old at the time. She and her brothers, Mostapha, 11, and Anes, nine, and her sister, Arowa, six, were told not to speak to each other.

“My mother was crying. She told me they were taking us to Libya. I was very scared. I thought my mother and father were going to be tortured and we would all be killed. I was told to say goodbye to my father. He was handcuffed to a seat in another compartment and had a drip in his arm. One of the Libyan intelligence officers was laughing at me.”

Khadija, her mother, and her siblings were held for two and a half months. Belhaj and Saadi were detained for six years, and say they were repeatedly tortured. They were also asked a series of questions that both MI6 and MI5 drew up and handed over to the ESO. There were more than 1,600 of these questions: these too were part of the serendipitous discovery at the abandoned ESO outpost.

British intelligence officers also interrogated the men in person. Left alone on one occasion with his British questioners, Belhaj says he conveyed through sign language that he was being suspended by his arms and beaten. The British clearly understood, he says: one gave a thumbs-up sign, while the other nodded her head.

Analysis of the Tripoli papers shows that the rendition operations were just part of the rapprochement between London and Tripoli, which appears to have been a complex affair driven more by intelligence officers than diplomats. There were efforts also to persuade Gaddafi to abandon his nuclear and chemical weapons ambitions, as well as oil and gas exploration deals, trade agreements and personal relationships.

Among the files was a letter from Blair to Gaddafi – “Dear Muammar”, it began – thanking him for their countries’ intelligence officers’ “excellent cooperation” and expressing regret that the English courts had again declined to deport a member of the LIFG.

The Tripoli papers show that some of the questions that had been handed to the Libyans were intended to elicit information that could justify the detention and attempted deportation of LIFG members who had resided peacefully in the UK for many years.

Despite the wealth of documentary evidence of UK involvement in these abuses, the government resisted the claim brought by Belhaj and Boudchar. By the beginning of last year, the government had spent £750,000 defending it, including £110,000 defending Allen and £26,500 defending Straw.

It appears ministers and government lawyers resisted the claims not because they were reluctant to make payments – Saadi settled for £2.2m in 2012 – but because they did not wish to apologise. Belhaj made clear that he did not want money – and has not received any – but he did want an apology, especially for his wife.

That was difficult as long as the police investigation was under way: if the government admitted liability, it was difficult to see how someone would not be charged with a criminal offence. Doubtless this was an appalling vista in the minds of many in Whitehall.

When the Crown Prosecution Service decided against prosecuting Allen – much to the anger of some detectives on the case – Belhaj’s lawyers sought a judicial review of the decision, and so an apology remained unthinkable.

Thursday’s settlement included an agreement that the bid for a judicial review would be abandoned: the path was finally clear for an apology and a settlement of the long-running case.

But did the secret collaboration between MI6 and ESO bear fruit?

On the one hand, some involved in the rendition operations claim they were part of a process that led to Gaddafi abandoning his WMD programme – although he actually did that three months earlier.

On the other hand, one of the documents discovered in Tripoli was an MI5 assessment of the LIFG, written 10 months after the two families had been abducted.

Marked “Secret, UK/Libya Eyes Only”, the report concluded candidly that while the detention of the two men had cast the LIFG into disarray, it had also pushed it closer to al-Qaida and its pan-Islamist, anti-western agenda.

