Straw ‘admitted agreeing to send suspect to Libya’
FORMER foreign secretary Jack Straw has admitted he approved the decision to capture a terror suspect and hand him to Colonel Gaddafi, it was reported yesterday. The admission apparently came after Foreign Office officials showed Mr Straw evidence he had ‘signed off’ the operation, in which a leading Libyan opponent of Gaddafi was flown to Tripoli in 2004.
Abdel Hakim Belhadj, who claims he was jailed and tortured in a Libyan prison after his ‘extraordinary rendition’, is suing the Government for £1million in compensation.
Yesterday Mr Straw faced demands to explain his role.
Cori Crider, legal director of the campaign group Reprieve, said: ‘Jack Straw once described UK involvement in rendition as a “conspiracy theory”. Now it appears he may have played a central role in signing off these shameful practices.
‘Along with MI6, he must come clean and give Mr Belhadj the apology he deserves.’
Last year Mr Straw appeared to deny any knowledge of the operation, saying: ‘The position of successive foreign secretaries, including me, is that we were opposed to unlawful rendition, opposed to torture or similar methods, and not only did we not agree with it, we were not complicit in it, nor did we turn a blind eye to it.’
After his remarks, he was confronted by MI6 officials who showed him documents relating to the case, the Sunday Times reported. Tory MP David Davis said: ‘If this is true, it implies that the responsibility for the extraordinary rendition of Belhadj lies at ministerial level under the last Labour government.
‘This is an extremely serious development. Mr Straw must clear this up . . . as a matter of urgency.’
Mr Straw could not be reached for comment yesterday, but a spokesman said: ‘I think you will readily understand that while an investigation is pending, it is not appropriate for Mr Straw to respond to queries like yours.’
Scotland Yard is investigating the allegations made by Belhadj, a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which in 2004 was linked to Al Qaeda.
Belhadj subsequently played a senior role in the rebel forces that overthrew the Gaddafi regime.
As well as the civil action against the Government, he is suing former MI6 counter-terror chief Sir Mark Allen.
Last year documents found at the bombed headquarters of Gaddafi’s former spy chief Musa Kusa appeared to reveal details of the operation.
In a letter to Kusa, Sir Mark said that while Britain had not carried out the operation, it was based on British intelligence. This was ‘the least we could do for you and for Libya’.
Belhadj and his wife were seized in Malaysia and taken to Libya on a CIA jet, which flew via Diego Garcia, the British territory in the Indian Ocean.
The rendition took place just weeks before Tony Blair, the former prime minister, signed the so-called ‘deal in the desert’ that reinstated diplomatic and trade links with Gaddafi.
Last week Mr Blair said he had no recollection of the Belhadj case.
The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 in 1988 was last night said to be ‘on his last breath’ – two-and-a-half years after being released from a Scottish jail with only months to live.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-megrahi, 60, who has terminal prostate cancer, was admitted to a Libyan clinic on Friday after his health deteriorated.