I keep linking a lot to the Daily Mail lately. Their coverage of the revelations of security services complicity with the Gadaffi regime has been outstanding.
Yesterday they showed that Libyan dissidents in the UK were made victims of control orders at the request of Colonel Gadaffi – not because they posed any particular threat of terrorism in the UK, but to handicap their anti-Gadaffi activities.
It is hard to imagine something that points up current hypocrisy over Libya more starkly. It also increases the shame of Nick Clegg for caving in to the Tories over the continuance of rebranded control orders. We are told that these are essential to protect the public when the Home Secretary has evidence that cannot be put before the court. The government continually briefs that this is communications intercept intelligence. In fact, as I have revealed before on this blog, that is a smokescreen – virtually none is communications intercept intelligence.
Most people under control orders were victims of “intelligence” from torture chambers overseas. That is why the “evidence” could not be put to court. That is the simple, shameful truth. But we now know, that in some cases the people whose lives were ruined by the extreme restrictions of Control Orders, were simply accused to please a dictator.
I do hope this opens the eyes of some who believe liberties can be surrendered to government in security matters because government can be trusted.
It is interesting to see Simon McDonald’s name appearing on one decidedly embarrassing letter published by the Mail. Simon, now our Ambassador in Germany, seems to have been one civil servant with no scruples about the dirtiest of dirty work. It was he who minuted Jack Straw’s approval of the meeting at which I was told it was policy to obtain torture from intelligence abroad. If the Gibson Inquiry were a genuine public inquiry, he should be in for a major grilling.
It is also good to see the Mail not scrupling to publish documents found, they say, not in Libyan security service offices, but in the British Ambassador’s Residence. This is however somewhat strange – you are not supposed to keep this kind of document lying around your Residence. In truth, every Ambassador sometimes takes classified papers home to work on, but these predate the current Ambassador. I am surprised if they really came from the Residence.