Al Jazeera World

Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Rendition And The West (2018x40)

Data di messa in onda: Ott 17, 2018

Filmmaker: Bashar Ghannam Nearly seven years after the death of Muammar Gaddafi, the British government apologised for handing over a Libyan dissident and his wife to Libya's intelligence in 2004, knowing that as an opponent of the government, they would be likely to be imprisoned and tortured. Fatima Boudchar was pregnant when she was tortured and kidnapped in Thailand in 2004, in a process that has become known as extraordinary rendition. It was carried out by MI6 and the CIA in collaboration with the Libyan External Security Organisation, the ESO. Her only 'crime' was that she was married to a Libyan opponent of the Gaddafi regime, Abdelhakim Belhaj. Belhaj was the former leader of an opposition group called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which Gaddafi accused of having links to al-Qaeda. He and his wife were planning to seek asylum in the UK. However, they were abducted in their transit in Thailand and taken to a CIA detention centre where they were tortured and later handed over to Libyan intelligence. 'I refused to be interrogated by them … and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or any organisation outside Libya. My problem was with the Libyan security services' says Belhaj. This was not an isolated case and the subject of rendition is one that Western governments need to be accountable for. Until 2003, Gaddafi had been labelled by the West as the 'mad dog of the Middle East'. But after the US-led invasion of Iraq failed to unearth Saddam Hussein any weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi seized an opportunity, not simply for redemption but complete rehabilitation, by claiming to possess WMDs and offering to surrender them. Sanctions against Libya were lifted, lucrative oil deals struck and collaboration between the CIA, MI6 and Libya stepped up in the so-called 'fight against terrorism'. This led directly to the rendition of Gaddafi's opponents like Belhaj and many others. After the US-led invasion of Iraq, Gadd