TWO SPY CHIEFS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
THE two spy chiefs with questions to answer are:
SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
He was in charge of MI6 when the spy agency begun its involvement in the torture and kidnap of terror suspects.
Sir Richard, who was head of MI6 from 1999 to 2004, took a highpowered delegation of intelligence officers to the Libyan capital, Tripoli, to discuss how to conduct a joint campaign against exiled Libyan jihadists with Muammar Gaddafi and his security chiefs in 2004.
Shortly after this meeting, MI6 was directly complicit in the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a leading opponent of Gaddafi, and Belhaj’s pregnant wife, Fatima Boudchar. Whitehall officials have described the rendition as the result of ‘ministerially authorised government policy’.
After leaving the Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard, 73, was master of Pembroke College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2015. He was also deputy vice chancellor of Cambridge University between 2005 and 2010.
SIR JOHN SCARLETT
He ran MI6 from 2004 to 2009 when many of the worst abuses were taking place.
He stood before the Intelligence and Security Committee in 2006 and said that his agency did not assist in any rendition to countries other than the US or the detainee’s country. It was later suggested that this was misleading and incorrect. Previously, the spy chief oversaw the production of the ‘dodgy dossier’ on Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction which subsequently proved to be false.
It is widely acknowledged to have given Tony Blair the justification he wanted to persuade MPs that Britain should invade Iraq.
Sir John, 69, was singled out in the Chilcot Report which investigated the circumstances of the run-up to the war and highlighted a litany of flawed information that MI6 had supplied.
Following his career in the intelligence services, Sir John went on to be in high demand in the business world.