Apology sought for Libyan troop victims

DEFENCE SECRETARY Michael Fallon has been urged to make a public apology to the victims of Libyan soldiers brought to the UK for training with the British Army, who carried out a string of horrific sex attacks on locals.

Moktar Ali Saad Mahmoud, 33, and Ibrahim Abugtila, 23, were both jailed for 12 years yesterday after acting like “hunting dogs” as they raped a man in central Cambridge last year.

Their jail terms for the attack followed the jailing yesterday of three other cadets who attacked women in the city on the same night, October 26. They were arrested while undergoing training at Bassingbourn Barracks in Cambridgeshire as part of an agreement by the British Government to help war-torn Libya after the 2011 collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, a scheme that was later scrapped.

Lewis Herbert, the Labour leader of Cambridge Council said “The least the victims and their families deserve is for the Secretary of State for Defence to issue a public apology. They also deserve a clear promise from the Ministry of Defence that it will not repeat the multiple, catastrophic errors in any future programmes for UK training of overseas troops from war-torn countries.”

An MoD spokesman said: “We condemn the incidents that took place in Cambridge and Bassingbourn.”

It added that it accepted that communication with the local authorities and community was not good enough.