![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/horseshit.jpg\" "\\"horseshit\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis past weekend has provided a few new insights into what Dick Cheney\u2019s policy of \u2018working the dark side\u2019 actually entailed and offered a piquant example of the law of unintended consequences.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch (HRW) was able to gain access to the headquarters of Libyan Intelligence after the organization\u2019s building in Tripoli fell to rebel control. HRW\u2019s researcher found files detailing the relationship that developed between the CIA and Gadhafi\u2019s external intelligence service in the years after September 11th.<\/p>\n
It is worth recalling that Libyan Intelligence had been behind (among other crimes) the murder of a British policewoman in London in 1984, two US servicemen in Berlin in 1986, and the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, which resulted in 270 fatalities.<\/p>\n
Libya also supplied the Provisional IRA with major arms shipments, including AK 47s, heavy machine guns and Semtex explosives, for over two decades.<\/p>\n
While Libya\u2019s relationship with the West certainly improved in the 2000s, there was no suggestion that Gadhafi\u2019s dismissive attitude towards human rights had similarly evolved.<\/p>\n
President Bush\u2019s Press Secretary Ari Fleischer acknowledged as much in this April 2003 comment on the composition of the UN Human Rights Commission:<\/p>\n
\u201c[The] Commission cannot expect to have Libya be its chair, to reelect Cuba, and not have people wonder if they really do stand for human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, at the same time that Fleischer was criticizing the UN, the CIA was arranging to render terrorism suspects to Libya where they could be jointly interrogated by Libyan and US intelligence officers.<\/p>\n
In one memo discovered by HRW, the CIA\u2019s former Deputy Director of Operations Stephen Kappes wrote to the Head of Libyan Intelligence, Moussa Koussa:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are eager to work with you in the questioning of the terrorist we recently rendered to your country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seeking to head off criticism at the weekend, US officials claimed that they sought assurances that the human rights of rendered individuals would be protected, and indeed communications between the CIA and Libyan intelligence have language seeking to indemnify the Agency from subsequent allegations of mistreatment.<\/p>\n
In essence, the US got lawyered up and is now channeling Claude Rains\u2019 Vichy police chief in the movie Casablanca who closed Bogart\u2019s nightclub for unlicensed gambling, even as he pocketed his winnings from the roulette table, with the immortally cynical line:<\/p>\n
\u201cI am shocked, shocked that there is gambling going on here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for the US government, a victim of the extraordinary rendition program, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, also went public last weekend with a graphic account of his own experiences, which demonstrate all too vividly just how empty the charade of diplomatic assurances actually was.<\/p>\n
And here comes the twist: Belhaj is now head of the Libyan rebels\u2019 military committee for restoring order in Tripoli, a position he holds courtesy of US and NATO airstrikes to oust Colonel Gadhafi from power.<\/p>\n
Belhaj is a former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which waged a low-level insurgency campaign against Gadhafi in the 1990s. The LIFG was defeated by Gadhafi in 1998 and its leadership fled to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. There are reported connections between LIFG and Al Qaeda in this period. Now, he\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
Belhaj claims that in 2004 he was abducted in Malaysia, tortured in a CIA \u2018black site\u2019 in Thailand and then rendered to Colonel Gadhafi\u2019s Libya where was held in solitary confinement for 6 years and repeatedly tortured by Libyan officials.<\/p>\n
Amazingly, Belhaj doesn\u2019t want revenge \u2013 he wants justice:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf one day there is a legal way, I would like to see my torturers brought to court.\u201d<\/p>\n
He may yet get his wish. A British public inquiry into the treatment of \u2018suspected terrorists\u2019 overseas has already announced that it will examine Belhaj\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
And the CIA might have got away with it too, if hadn\u2019t been for those meddling rebels\u2026 …source<\/a><\/p>\n