British and US intelligence cooperated closely with Libya, with prisoners being offered to Moamer Kadhafi’s regime under the rendition programme, a report said Saturday citing files found in Tripoli.
British daily The Independent said the secret documents discovered in the office of former Libyan foreign minister Mussa Kussa also show that Britain passed details of exiled opponents to Kadhafi’s spies.
The cache further shows that it was the office of former prime minister Tony Blair that requested that a 2004 meeting with Kadhafi in Tripoli should take place in a Bedouin tent, the daily said.
There was no immediate reaction from British or US authorities to the report.
The paper said the documents would raise questions about the ties that Britain, in particular, and the United States forged with Kussa and the regime as the western powers tried to bring Libya out of isolation.
Kussa flew to Britain in March and defected, but despite being accused of rights violations was allowed to fly to Qatar the following month.
The Independent said the papers include letters and faxes to Kussa headed “Greetings from MI6” (Britain’s foreign intelligence service) and a personal Christmas greeting signed by a senior British spy with the epithet “Your friend”.
It also cites a US administration document, marked secret, saying that it was “in a position” to deliver a man named as Shaykh Musa, a member of the Al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “to your physical custody.”
“We respectfully request an expression of interest from your service regarding taking custody of Musa,” it quotes the document as saying.
In a separate report the Wall Street Journal said files show strong cooperation between the CIA and Kadhafi’s intelligence agencies, including shipping terror suspects to the North African country for interrogation.
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