This is a new report of the CIA’s torture, prisons, treatment of persons seized, and renditions to other countries. It’s based on interviews and contains interview material of about 14 Libyans who were kidnapped.
Most of these men were opposed to Gaddafi’s regime back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Because he was brutally repressing any resistance, they fled Libya and went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. They were in the LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group). They were not al-Qaeda and they didn’t merge with al-Qaeda. In Afghanistan, they got training paid for by the Saudis administered through a U.S. Swiss bank. After 9/11, they feared being arrested as part of al-Qaeda, which they eventually were. The anti-Gaddafi LIFG was declared a terrorist group by the U.S. This was at a time when Gaddafi and Bush and Blair were getting cozy and Gaddafi was paying reparations and eschewing WMD. Part of the deal was to render these men back to him. Their entreaties fell on deaf ears. In fact, they were held incommunicado for long periods, tortured, and shipped back to Libya against all canons of justice. After Gaddafi’s overthrow, some of these men who had not earlier died or been killed or committed suicide came out of Gaddafi’s prisons, so that they could relate what had been done to them. I may have some of the details wrong, but that’s roughly the story. The report is much more informative than this admittedly rough introduction. It has the details of their mistreatment and it has more on the politics.
4:45 pm on September 10, 2012
