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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Captured Libyan Documents and a Criminal Investigation

This is slightly belated, but I wanted to note briefly a significant development related to an earlier post regarding a U.K. civil suit based on documents captured in Tripoli that related to British (and U.S.) involvement in the rendition of individuals to Libya.  Earlier this month, a joint statement by the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan Police Service announced that a criminal investigation had been initiated into the matter, noting that the services had jointly "decided that the allegations raised in the two specific cases concerning the alleged rendition of named individuals to Libya and the alleged ill-treatment of them in Libya are so serious that it is in the public interest for them to be investigated now."

The allegations relate to the renditions of Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, both of which, as noted in the New York Times, "have cited a cache of secret documents recovered from the Qaddafi government's intelligence files after the fall of Tripoli to rebel forces, which included letters that appeared to implicate British officials in cooperating with Colonel Qaddafi's agents."

For copies of some of the captured Libyan documents see here and here.