Libyan rebel wins right to sue Straw over torture f light
JACK Straw faces being sued over the scandal of Britain’s involvement in the torture and kidnap of a Libyan dissident.
The former foreign secretary and intelligence chiefs could be forced into the witness box to defend claims MI6 was complicit in sending a man and his pregnant wife back into the clutches of Colonel Gaddafi in 2004.
Abdel Hakim Belhaj – an opponent of Gaddafi – and wife Fatima were handed over to the tyrant’s henchmen in the same month as Tony Blair struck his notorious ‘ deal in the desert’ with the despot.
The Supreme Court yesterday gave the couple permission to sue the Government over their extraordinary rendition – in which suspects are flown to another country for imprisonment and interrogation.
Lawyers for Mr Belhaj, 50, say he is determined to take the case to court unless he receives an apology and a token £1 in damages. Such a hearing could lay bare the depth to which the Blair Government was complicit in the CIA’s torture programme.
Mr Straw, ex- MI6 counterterror chief Sir Mark Allen, MI6, MI5, the Foreign Office and the Home Office had sought to have Mr Belhaj’s case thrown out.
Government lawyers claimed that British courts do not have jurisdiction over alleged torture that took place abroad and was conducted by a foreign government. They also argued that the compensation claim would damage relations with the US.
But the Supreme Court said there was ‘no reason’ why Mr Belhaj’s allegations should not be decided in the UK. Supreme Court Justice Lord Mance said the use of torture had ‘long been regarded as abhorrent by English law’.
He said: ‘The critical point in my view is the nature and seriousness of the misconduct alleged… at however high a level it may have been authorised.’
Rendition and assisting in torture were not justified on the basis of maintaining ‘foreign policy advantages’, he added.
Following the ruling, Mr Belhaj said: ‘Years ago I asked the British government to apologise for what it had done.
‘I have always said I was prepared to forgive, but that first Britain needed to accept that to abduct me and my wife and send us to Gaddafi is, and always was, wrong. The Government refused this basic plea for justice. So I am gratified we will have a trial.’
In a statement, Mr Straw said: ‘As Foreign Secretary I acted at all times in a manner which was fully consistent with my legal duties, and with national and international law. I was never in any way complicit in the unlawful rendition or detention of anyone by other states.’
Mr Belhaj fled Libya as a dissi- dent in the 1990s and sought asylum through the British High Commission. But it is claimed that MI6 agents tipped off the CIA, and Mr Belhaj and his wife were taken into custody as they changed planes in Bangkok before being flown to Libya.
He says he suffered six years of abuse in Gaddafi’s torture dungeons. His wife was held for four months. After his release in 2010, he helped overthrow Gaddafi and is now a political leader.