Jack Straw, MI6's Mark Allen 'misled MPs about Britain's role in renditions'
Foreign minister and MI6 'must have known dissidents would be tortured', court papers say
Former British foreign secretary Jack Straw, and Sir Mark Allen, a former senior MI6 officer, have been cited as key defendants in court documents that describe abuse meted out to Libyan dissidents after being abducted and handed to Muammar Gaddafi's secret police with the help of British intelligence.
The documents accuse Straw of misleading MPs about Britain's role in the rendition of two leading dissidents - Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi - and say MI6 must have known they risked being tortured. They say British intelligence officers provided Libyan interrogators with questions to ask their captives and also flew to Tripoli to interview the detainees in jail.
Saadi is the dissident who was controversially detained with his family in Hong Kong before being sent to Libya, via Thailand, in 2004, allegedly as a result of a joint CIA-MI6 operation, with the collusion of Hong Kong officers. Saadi is also suing the Hong Kong government over his treatment.
The latest court documents, served by the law firm Leigh Day and the human rights group, Reprieve, recount how Belhaj was chained, hooded, and beaten; his pregnant wife, Fatima Bouchar, punched and bound; how Saadi was repeatedly assaulted; his wife, Ait Baaziz, hooded and ill-treated; and their four young children traumatised, as they were abducted and jailed in Libya following tip-offs by MI6 and the CIA in 2004.
Belhaj and Saadi were leading members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which opposed Gaddafi. Belhaj became head of the Tripoli Brigade during last year's revolution and is a leading Libyan political figure. They are suing Straw, Allen, MI5, MI6, the Foreign Office, the Home Office (the UK's ministry of the interior), and the attorney general for damages for unlawful detention, conspiracy to injure, negligence, and abuse of public office. It is believed to be the first such action taken against a former British foreign secretary.
The court documents allege MI6 alerted Libyan intelligence to the whereabouts of Belhaj and his family. They were held in Malaysia and Thailand and flown to Libya in a CIA plane. They also claim that the CIA and MI6 co-operated in the rendition of Saadi and his family from Hong Kong, and that Straw and his co-defendants knew that torture was endemic in Gaddafi's Libya.