UK apologises to Libyan dissident Belhaj over rendition
BRITAIN has apologised for contributing to the ill treatment of Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who was kidnapped in Thailand in 2004, transferred to Libya and tortured.
Belhaj - who was seized with his then-pregnant wife Fatima Boudchar and four children while on their way to the UK - has said that a tipoff from the MI6, Britain’s’ foreign intelligence agency, led to their capture.
“The UK government’s actions contributed to your detention, rendition and suffering ... On behalf of Her Majesty’s government, I apologise to you unreservedly,” Theresa May, Britain’s prime minister, said in a letter to Belhaj and his wife Fatima Boudchar, which was read out in parliament yesterday by Jeremy Wright, the attorney general.
Wright said the settlement with the couple included a £500,000 payment to Boudchar.
Speaking in Istanbul, Turkey, after the settlement was announced, Belhaj said: “I welcome and accept the prime minister’s apology, and I extend to her and the attorney general my thanks and goodwill.
“For more than six years I have made clear that I had a single goal in bringing this case: justice. Now, at last, justice has been done. “Britain has made a wrong right today, and set an example for other nations to follow.”
British police who accumulated nearly 30,000 pages of evidence over a five-year period had investigated Belhaj’s case, and that of another Libyan dissident Sami al-saadi whose family was also abducted and rendered to Libya.
While the Saadi family received a £2m settlement two years ago, Belhaj insisted he only wanted an apology and a symbolic £1 payment from each of the defendants.
Following the announcement, which Boudchar attended with her son in London, she thanked the British government for their apology.
“I thank the British government for its apology ... I accept the government’s apology,” Boudchar said.
“By today’s settlement I look forward to rebuilding my life with dignity and honour, and living free from the weight of these events with my husband and our five beautiful children.”
For Cori Crider, a lawyer and the strategic director of Reprieve’s Abuses in Counter-terrorism, who has been working as a lawyer and counsel to the family for many years, the settlement is victory.