Which? calls on government to take action to curb ‘excessive’ payment charges after lodging super complaint with the OFT Consumers are paying an estimated £265,000 a day in debit card surcharges for booking plane tickets, despite recommendations that the government ban such fees. Consumer organisation Which? submitted a super complaint – a complaint about market features that may be significantly harming consumers’ interests – to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in March, asking the regulator to investigate excessive surcharges for travellers who pay for flights with a credit or debit card. At the end of June the OFT proposed that charges for paying by debit card should be banned , and pointed out that a simple amendment to existing Payment Services Regulations by the Treasury would achieve this. But the government still has not taken action and Which? calculates that since the end of June consumers have collectively paid £18m in airline debit card surcharges. Nine of the 28 UK-based airlines charge customers for using debit or electron cards, and two airlines – Swiss and Lufthansa – have even announced plans to start charging customers a £4.50 fee on all payment card bookings from 2 November. Others, including Easyjet, charge up to £8. During its investigation Which? found that a family of four booking a return flight with Ryanair would be charged £40 to pay by debit or credit card. The actual cost to the retailer for processing a debit card transaction is 20p, and no more than 2% of the transaction value on credit cards. Airlines have faced particular criticism for “drip pricing” – adding charges only after the consumer has filled in a number of web pages during their purchase, making it difficult for them to compare the true cost of booking a flight. But the practice of adding charges for using a debit card is not exclusive to the airline industry: the Trainline website adds a £3.50 charge when paying for train tickets by credit card; and Eurostar charges £4. London cab firm Dial-a-Cab and Radio Taxis adds 12.5% to the cost of their fares for paying with a debit or credit card, and Addison Lee charges £4.40. Richard Lloyd, Which? executive director, said: “With most airlines yet to drop these card surcharges, and some introducing new fees, it is time for the government to put a stop to this. “A minor change to the law is all it would take to ban the charges on debit cards that you only find out about at the end of a lengthy online booking process. The government must act so that consumers can easily compare the cost of their flights.” In June, Monarch Airlines scrapped all debit card booking fees and said payments by credit card would trigger a flat fee of £10 a booking. Monarch chief executive Conrad Clifford said the charging shake-up was intended to provide an “upfront, transparent and simple to understand” policy. Which? is asking people to pledge their support for government action by emailing financial secretary Mark Hoban . A spokesman for the Treasury said: “The government is committed to working with the OFT to stop retailers, including airlines, imposing hidden surcharges on customers who pay by card. We are considering the OFT’s recommendations and will respond in due course.” Consumer affairs Debit cards Credit cards Banks and building societies Cheap flights Jill Insley guardian.co.uk
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A man claiming to have a bomb in his backpack triggered a hostage standoff near a court complex in a suburb of Sydney A man claiming to have a bomb in his backpack has triggered a hostage situation near an Australian court complex in western Sydney. Police have cordoned off a building in a tense standoff with the man who is understood to be issuing demands from a lawyer’s office where he holed up with his teenage daughter, police said. A cordon has been maintained around the lawyers’ office building in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta, and workers in nearby office blocks said they had been evacuated. The man, who appeared to be in his 50s, made a series of demands to police negotiators who were inside the office building, which adjoins a court complex, Police Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford said. Clifford declined to detail those demands and said police had yet to establish a motive. “We’re working through those demands with him and we’re doing the best we can to secure a peaceful resolution,” Clifford told reporters. “The fact that he’s there and he’s made certain threats is obviously of concern to us.” Clifford said the girl, who was apparently aged in her early teens, appeared to be doing well. “We don’t believe there’s any specific threat against the girl, but obviously we’d like to secure her release,” he said. “The concern is that she’s in a situation where we’ve got somebody with a backpack we don’t know exactly what’s in that backpack so we have to assume that what he’s saying is true.” Police officers were seen entering the building with at least one automatic weapon. Betty Hor said she was working at the reception desk at the lawyers’ offices when the man approached on Tuesday morning and asked to see someone whom Hor had never heard. The man went upstairs briefly then returned to the reception desk and repeated his request. She repeated that she had never heard of the man. Hor said he then threw a book on the desk and told her to call the unknown man and the state attorney-general’s department and “tell them I’ve got a bomb in my backpack.” Hor called police as the man walked upstairs to a lawyer’s office with the girl, who called him “Dad.” Hor said he seemed frustrated and angry. She said she had never seen him before. Television footage showed the man looking from a second-floor window shirtless and wearing the same kind of wig as worn in Australian courts by judges and lawyers. At one point he spat on the wig. He later swung a glass bottle like a hammer to smash a plate-sized hole in the office window. He yelled through the hole and threw the bottle, then a telephone handset, which was left dangling by its cord. Five ambulances and two fire trucks were standing by at the scene. Robert Hoffman, who works in a neighbouring office block, said police had evacuated his and other buildings in the vicinity. Police moved people at least 100 yards (metres) from the building where the man was holed up, Hoffman said. Clifford said he did not believe that the standoff had anything to do with the family court that adjoins the building. Bitter family court cases have triggered some high-profile crimes recently in Australia, including the murder of a 4-year-old girl whose father threw her more than 260 feet (80 metres) from a bridge in the southern city of Melbourne in 2009. The father, Arthur Freeman, 37, was sentenced in April to life in prison after a jury rejected his plea of innocence due to mental illness. Tuesday’s standoff comes a month after an extortionist broke into a Sydney home and fastened a fake bomb around the neck of a millionaire’s teenage daughter. She spent 10 hours with the device strapped to her before police determined it was harmless and freed her. A man has been arrested in the United States in connection with the incident and is awaiting extradition. Australia guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Figures. Dumbest Website on Internet Defends Hoffa’s Violent, Profanity-Laced Threatening Labor Day Speech (Video)
September 5, 2011 No Comment
What a shock. The dumbest website on the internet Media Matters defended Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa’s profanity-laced threatening speech against conservatives today. Media Matters insisted that Hoffa’s remarks were taken out of context. Uh-huh. Here is Jimmy Hoffa’s angry violent … Continue reading → Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Gateway Pundit Discovery Date : 05/09/2011 20:15 Number of articles : 2
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White House says cost to taxpayer comes on top of $5.2bn needed to deal with other recent disasters The damage caused by Hurricane Irene will cost $1.5bn in disaster relief, the White House has estimated. White House budget director Jacob Lew said the cost to taxpayers came on top of $5.2bn needed to deal with other recent disasters, including tornadoes that leveled much of Joplin, Missouri. Announcing the initial estimate, Lew said the $1.5bn relief fund should last through next year. More than 40 people were killed when Irene lashed the eastern easboard from the Carolinas to Maine. Despite being downgraded to a tropical storm as it hit land, Irene destroyed many homes and caused serious flooding in Vermont and upstate New York. The damage is expected to total billions of dollars but federal government aid does not include costs covered by private insurance. The costing came as the remenants of Tropical Storm Lee killed a man in Mississippi when he was swept away by floodwaters. John Howard Anderson Jr, 57, had been in a car with two other people trying to cross a rain-swollen creek. Tishomingo County coroner Mack Wilemon said he was told Anderson was outside the car and had been thrown a rope to be rescued, but he could not hold on. The storm was last night sweeping across Alabama and pushing into Georgia, where strong winds, possibly of tornado strength, sent trees crashing into homes and injured at least one person. Lieutenant Jay Baker of the Cherokee county sheriff’s office, northwest of Atlanta, said one person was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. By Monday afternoon at least 16,000 people were without power in Louisiana and Mississippi, which bore the brunt of the storm over the weekend. Hurricane Irene Natural disasters and extreme weather United States David Batty guardian.co.uk
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New £9,000 annual fee for all courses, with four-year degrees as standard, makes Edinburgh Britain’s most expensive university Edinburgh University has announced that it will charge non-Scottish UK students £36,000 for a degree. The National Union of Students Scotland said the new £9,000 annual fee for all courses, with four-year degrees as standard, makes Edinburgh the most expensive university in Britain. Heriot Watt and Aberdeen universities have also announced £9,000-a-year fees for non-Scots, but unlike Edinburgh they are capping fees at £27,000. Edinburgh defended its decision by saying it would offset its fees with generous £6.7m-a-year bursaries for its non-Scottish undergraduates. It will be heavily funded by the higher fees, and be worth up to £7,000 a year per student. Professor Mary Bownes, the university’s vice chancellor for external engagement, said: “The increase in the fee is necessary as we will no longer receive government funding for the rest of the UK domiciled students. These students will be studying at one of the world’s top teaching and research institutions, regularly ranked amongst the leading universities in the world.” About 22,500 “rest of the UK” students go to Scottish universities each a year, currently paying £1,820 a year in fees, but the new fees were authorised by the Scottish government earlier this year. Scottish university principals and Scottish ministers feared that there would be a surge in “fee refugees” heading north to avoid the £9,000 a year fees for English colleges authorised by the UK government. Heriot Watt and Aberdeen have also announced new and enhanced bursaries for poorer students from outside Scotland to offset the new charges but the top-rate fees were denounced by the National Union of Students Scotland as “terrible news”. Referring to Edinburgh’s decision, Graeme Kirkpatrick, the union’s depute president, said: “A £36,000 degree is both staggering and ridiculous. The average cost to study at Oxford and Cambridge is around £25,000 in fees, which while still eye-wateringly large, pales in comparison with this. And that’s before you add additional debt for the extra year of living costs for the four-year degree in Scotland. “This is nothing less than cashing in on students from the rest of the UK, and giving the signal that Edinburgh University is more interested in the money you can bring, as opposed to your academic ability. The reputational damage this could do, not only to Edinburgh but to the whole of Scottish higher education, should not be underestimated. “There’s clearly a race to the top happening here in terms of setting fees. It’s a depressing day when a university feels it’s more likely to be judged on the price tag it chooses rather than the quality of the education it provides. Tuition fees put off the poorest students and make university more about your bank balance than your ability.” Most university courses in Scotland last four years, against three elsewhere in the UK, because many courses start with a general “foundation” year before students begin specialising fully. That would have allowed Scottish colleges to set fees as high as £36,000 for a full four-year degree, much higher than their English counterparts, but Scottish universities believe most English students with strong A-level grades will be able to bypass the foundation year and begin their courses in second year. Some students will face higher fees. Students doing medicine at Aberdeen and Edinburgh will still be charged £9,000 a year for the full five year course, as in England. Heriot Watt said students on “enhanced”, five year courses in engineering, physics, chemistry and maths would be charged £9,000 for four years. The Scottish universities argue the decision to cap fees for mainstream subjects at £27,000 will allow them to compete directly with English colleges. Professor Steve Chapman, the principle at Heriot Watt, defended the new fees, which will affect about 225 non-Scottish students there each year. He said his university’s degrees were “a positive investment in future employment. Over 92% of our graduates are in work or further study within six months of graduation, with approximately three quarters of those going straight into graduate level jobs.” Heriot Watt also expects that a third of its student from the rest of the UK will be able to get bursaries to help the new fees. Scottish students will not be charged the new £9,000 a year fees because of an anomaly in European Union laws, which is expected to be challenged in court by several English students and the Birmingham-based law firm Public Interest Law. Since the Scottish government does not charge its residents university fees, all other non-UK students are also entitled to free tuition under EU laws. However, as Scotland is a subsidiary part of the UK and is not a member state in its own right, it is able to treat other UK citizens differently. Tuition fees Higher education Edinburgh Students Scotland Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk
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City prepares for second round of quantitative easing after sharpest slowdown in UK’s services sector in a decade The City was readying itself for a second dose of electronic money creation from the Bank of England after the sharpest slowdown in Britain’s services sector in a decade prompted a £49bn loss in the value of leading London shares. One leading analyst predicted that Threadneedle Street could reactivate its quantitative easing programme this week after the monthly report from purchasing managers flashed warning signs of a double-dip recession over the winter. News that activity in the services sector – which accounts for 75% of the economy – had dropped at its fastest rate since the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001 sent shares sharply lower. With anxiety mounting over the eurozone’s debt-ridden governments, the FTSE 100 Index closed almost 190 points lower at 5103. Shares across Europe fell more heavily in response to weak economic figures and concerns that the political weakness of Angela Merkel’s centre-right government will blunt attempts at solving the eurozone’s debt crisis. Wall Street was closed for Labour Day. Banks were the biggest losers in London as a further £49bn was wiped off the value of leading shares following a loss of £33bn last Friday. The part-nationalised RBS fell more than 12% after it was singled out by a broker as the most vulnerable British target of claims made by the US Federal Housing Finance Agency over the subprime mortgage scandal. Barclays and HSBC, which joined RBS on the list of 17 banks, fell 7% and 4% respectively. Lloyds Banking Group fell 7%. Michael Saunders, economist at Citi, said the services data would have an impact on the Bank’s nine-strong monetary policy committee. “With these figures and other signs of increased downside risks to growth, we now believe that the MPC is likely to restart QE, either at this week’s meeting or the October one,” he said. Howard Archer, UK economist at IHS Global Insight, agreed that more QE was on the way, but not yet. “The survey strongly reinforces belief that interest rates are staying down at 0.5% for a long time to come [but] we believe that further quantitative easing still seems unlikely as soon as this Thursday given still significant near-term inflation concerns.” Labour accused the chancellor,George Osborne, of being in denial about the state of the economy. “We urgently need a plan for jobs and growth to kickstart the economy and so help get the deficit down,” said Chris Leslie, shadow Treasury minister. “The government should start by temporarily cutting VAT and using the money raised from a tax on bank bonuses to build thousands of affordable homes and get people off the dole and into work.” Quantitative easing Economic policy Economics Interest rates Bank of England Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Raoul Moat told girlfriend ‘I’m going to go crazy’ in call that led to rampage
September 5, 2011 No Comment
Inquest also told that police received a later call from Moat saying he was hunting down officers and ‘not coming in alive’ A recording of a phone call from Raoul Moat was played to an inquest jury in which he warned his girlfriend that he was “going to go crazy” after she told him she wanted him out of her life. The call between Samantha Stobbart and the 37-year-old bouncer was made when Moat was in prison and police said it was a catalyst for his murderous rampage, Newcastle crown court heard, on the first day of the inquest. Within days of his release from Durham prison, Moat shot and injured 22-year-old Stobbart, the mother of his child, and killed her new boyfriend, 29-year-old Chris Brown. The jury also heard a later call from Moat to police in which he said he was hunting down officers and was “not coming in alive”. That call, to an emergency call handler, came after he had attacked Stobbart and Brown in Birtley, Tyne and Wear, in July 2010, and shortly before he shot unarmed Pc David Rathband, blinding him, as he sat in his police car. He claimed he had taken two hostages and would kill them and any police officer who approached him. Moat expressed remorse for injuring his girlfriend, but added that he had been “stitched up” by the police for a number of years. Moat had thought, incorrectly, that Brown was a police officer; it was what Stobbart had told him in an attempt to keep him away from her. He told the call handler: “Now, my girlfriend has been having an affair behind my back with one of your officers. This gentleman that I shot last night, the karate instructor … You bastards have been on to me, right, for years. You have hassled us, harassed us, you just won’t leave us alone. “I went straight six years ago when I met her and I have tried my best to have a normal life and you just won’t let up. You won’t leave us alone for five minutes. I can’t drive down the street without the blue lights flashing.” The call continued: “But the fact of the matter is I’m not coming in alive … You wanted me to kill myself but I’m going to give you a chance because I’m hunting for officers now, right?” The call handler said: “No. Please don’t do that. We don’t want any more killing, all right?” Moat hung up. The earlier recording was made in June 2010, while Moat was serving an 18-week prison sentence for assault. Police retrieved three recorded calls from the prison during their investigation. In one of the calls, Moat asked Stobbart: “What’s wrong?” She replied: “It’s over.” “Over what?” he asked her. “I’ve had enough,” she said. “Of what?” Moat said. “Everything.” Moat said: “We had one argument the other day. Let’s not get all silly about it.” He complained that “everybody is getting on my case” and that he was getting “picked on”. The conversation ended with the phone being slammed down. In the second call, Moat told Stobbart: “You are the only person I have ever cared about. I can’t have you out of my life. I’m going to go crazy, man.” She told him she had met a new man who was “a lot younger than you”. Superintendent Jim Napier, of Northumbria police, said: “It is clear from the evidence that Moat’s breakup with Samantha Stobbart was the catalyst for his murderous acts.” Moat – who became the subject of a huge manhunt – died following a six-hour stand-off with police marksmen. He shot himself in the head after the stand-off at Rothbury, Northumberland, during which police twice fired XREP Tasers that had not been approved by the Home Office. The 11 members of the jury sworn in at Newcastle crown court will decide whether the Taser rounds contributed to the former nightclub doorman’s death. The coroner, David Mitford, told jurors that an inquest was needed because, “Mr Moat met his death when he was effectively detained [in the siege with police]“. He added: “It will not have escaped your attention that there were some weapons called Tasers used on the night in question. Those Tasers were supplied to Northumbria Police by a firm called Pro-Tec Limited.” He urged the jurors to do “the impossible” and forget what they had already heard about the Moat case. “There will be questions about the weapons used, how police managed the incident, how officers dealt with the deceased and how he acted”, the jury was told. The jury was also read six letters in which Moat indicated he might take his own life. They were addressed to his former girlfriend, to social services, his business partner Karl Ness and other friends. The letters outlined the problems in his life and told his friends what to do with his belongings. Superintendent Napier said the letters found in a search indicated Moat was “suicidal or had been suicidal in the past” and the letters appeared to be prepared by Moat and intimated he intended to take his own life. Napier said officers also found a noose in the property near the loft hatch, he told the jury. Officers found fishing weights and material that suggested they could be converted to ammunition. ” Napier said: “Following the shooting of Pc Rathband and Moat’s declaration he was hunting for officers, this search developed on to a scale we have never really experienced in Northumbria police and I understand seldom experienced before in the UK.” Moat left a note with a friend that said: “I’m a killer and a maniac but I ain’t a coward. I’m not on the run, I will keep killing police until I am dead. They’ve hunted me for years, now it’s my turn.” The inquest, which is expected to last four weeks, continues. Raoul Moat Crime Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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At least 30 Kurdish fighters have been killed and 40 injured in clashes near Sardasht, an Iranian official has claimed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have killed at least 30 Kurdish rebels in fighting near the Iraqi border, according to a military official. A senior Iranian military spokesman, Colonel Hamid Ahmadi, told state TV that another 40 members of the Iranian Kurdish group Pejak had been injured during fierce clashes outside the border city of Sardasht. Following the clash a Pejak spokesman inside Iraq declared an immediate, unilateral ceasefire. Shirzad Kamanger appealed for Iranian forces to stop shelling rebel bases and open talks over the Kurdish group’s demands for greater rights in Iran. But Ahmadi rejected the call, saying: “A ceasefire with a terrorist group doesn’t make any sense.” He told state TV: “We want them to leave the border region before any dialogue can be held.” The fighting comes a week after the Revolutionary Guards announced a new military offensive against Pejak, or the Free Life party of Kurdistan, with the intention of driving them from their positions in Iran. Iran has sporadically bombed Pejak bases deep inside Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region. Tehran maintains it has the right to take such action and has accused Iraqi Kurds of sheltering the group, which is battling over Kurdish areas of north-western Iran. Iran Kurds Iraq Middle East David Batty guardian.co.uk
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Clegg’s demands over NHS may spark Lords amendments – as Lib Dem grassroots say bill will hurt patients and party The Tories and Liberal Democrats are facing a fresh clash over the government’s NHS reforms after Nick Clegg encouraged his MPs to put “probing questions” to ministers when the bill returns to the Commons on Tuesday. In a two-hour meeting with his parliamentary party on Monday night, the deputy prime minister held out the possibility that he will accept amendments to the heath and social care bill when it moves to the House of Lords later this month. Clegg’s move means that Lady Williams could be backed by Liberal Democrat ministers if she attempts to amend the bill to guarantee that the health secretary has a legal duty to deliver a comprehensive health service free at the point of need. But a source at the Department of Health indicated last night that Andrew Lansley, the health secretary – who has already amended the bill after the government’s “listening exercise” – would not accept fresh amendments on this point. The source said: “Our view is that the legislation is watertight on the secretary of state’s obligation to ensure there is an NHS available to all. That was always our view. But we amended the legislation to reassure those who were not sure.” Clegg said earlier in the day that he accepted the view that there was no need for fresh amendments on this issue. In a speech on schools in south-west London, he said: “Let me be absolutely clear. There is nothing, nothing, nothing in any of the government’s plans which in anyway threaten the basic founding principles of the NHS…There is no question, legally or politically, of the secretary of state under these new arrangements being somehow able to wash his or her hands of the NHS.” But at Monday night’s meeting of the Lib Dem parliamentary party, Clegg admitted that ministers still had to work hard to clarify the bill for MPs and peers with concerns. Paul Burstow, the Lib Dem health minister, is to offer further briefings to MPs and peers who will also be invited to meet officials at the department of health. All sides accept that it is too late to table further amendments on the NHS reforms when the bill is debated by MPs at report stage on Tuesday and Wednesday and at third reading on Wednesday . But Lib Dem MPs have been encouraged to put “probing questions” to ministers for possible amendments that will be tabled in the House of Lords. One Lib Dem source said: “We hope that we will not need to amend the bill further. But we may have to.” Another Lib Dem source said: “There will be robust interventions in the debate.” Lib Dem whips believe that the overwhelming number of MPs will support the amended bill. But Andrew George, the Lib Dem MP for St Ives, said he would rebel. The battle within the Lib Dem ranks was exposed last night in leaked emails, in which grassroots members of the party vented their anger at the leadership. Jeremy Sanders of Huddersfield Liberal Democrats wrote in an email to John Pugh this week, the Lib Dem backbench health committee chairman, that “yes, we can try to get improvements to the details, but none of these changes are going to alter the basic fact that the legislation is based on the assumption that what the NHS needs is a system based on private sector involvement, free market competition and internal markets. “Quite honestly, if our MPs are willing to go along with this, what exactly won’t they be willing to support?” In the same batch of emails obtained by the Guardian, Robert Hutchison, a Lib Dem councillor in Winchester, tells Pugh that “in my view is that if Lib Dem MPs vote for the bill this week — without further major amendments — it will damage the NHS and damage the party”. Charles West, one of the key party activists on the NHS, has written to party members to back an appeal against the the Lb Dem’s conference committee decision not to debate the health bill at the forthcoming party conference. “I have therefore written a letter of appeal to the Federal Conference Committee against their narrow decision not to take the motion that I and over 100 conference reps submitted in June, and in case that appeal fails we are submitting an emergency motion which will achieve the same ends”. Last month Andrew George, the Lib Dem rebel on the health bill, emailed Lib Dem activists with a blunt message: “of course I’ll try to influence colleagues but some are still basking in the synthetic afterglow of the post-pause Bill revision, perhaps having duped themselves that it’s ‘job done’! People need to wake up to the fact that we can say what we like at Conference, but the MPs main chance to influence would already have passed!” Labour twisted the knife into the Lib Dems with the party’s health spokesman John Healey arguing that Nick Clegg’s claim that he had met 11 out of the 13 changes demanded by his party’s spring conference resolution was “wrojng”. “He’s failed on seven and sallen short on six”. Baroness Thornton, the party’s spokesperson in the Lords, warned that the lack of scrutiny in the Commons — where 1,000 amenments mean just 40s of parliamentary to consider each one — could see the bill be put into a specialist committee to examine whether there is enough time to debate the bill. Writing in the Guardian, Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, a former GP who had criticised the health bill, says now is the time to back the coalition’s plans as “the structural changes to the NHS have passed the point of no return”. She argues instead that the bill needs to be amended to ensure that the choice of who is appointed to sit on and run the new NHS National Commissioning Board, a quango with £60bn to spend, is fairly and openly discussed. NHS Health Public services policy Politics Liberal Democrats Conservatives Nick Clegg Liberal-Conservative coalition Nicholas Watt Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk
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Abdul Hakim Belhaj says MI6 helped CIA arrest him and send him to Libya for torture A Libyan rebel leader who was rendered to Tripoli with the assistance of MI6 said on Monday that he had told British intelligence officers he was being tortured but they did nothing to help him. In a claim that will increase the pressure for further disclosure about the UK’s role in torture and rendition since 9/11, Abdul Hakim Belhaj said a team of British interrogators used hand signals to indicate they understood what he was telling them. “I couldn’t believe they could let this go on,” he said. “What has happened deserves a full inquiry.” Belhaj was detained by the CIA in Thailand in 2004 following an MI6 tipoff, allegedly tortured, then flown to Tripoli, where he says he suffered years of abuse in one of Muammar Gaddafi’s prisons. It emerged on Monday that MI6 had been able to tell the CIA of his whereabouts after his associates informed British diplomats in Malaysia that he wished to claim asylum in the UK. Belhaj was then allowed to board a flight for London and abducted when the plane called at Bangkok. There were signs that the discovery of a cache of secret MI6 and CIA documents at an abandoned government office building in Tripoli was triggering panic in some parts of Whitehall. The papers detail the UK’s role not only in the rendition of Belhaj, but in that of a second man, known as Abu Munthir. This operation appears to have been planned by British and Libyan intelligence officers without any CIA involvement. David Cameron said the disclosures would be investigated by the Gibson inquiry, set up last year to examine the UK’s role in torture and rendition. It was unclear whether MI6 or MI5 had disclosed anything to the inquiry before the new documents came to light. Inquiry staff first indicated they knew nothing about the Libyan operations, and were seeking information from the government “as soon as possible”. Later they said they had “received material relating to these issues”, but declined to be more specific. Similarly, the Conservative MP Richard Ottaway, a former member of the intelligence and security committee, a Westminster body supposed to provide oversight of MI5 and MI6, indicated the committee knew nothing about the UK-Libya operations before giving the agencies a clean bill of health in a 2007 report on rendition; he then said he could say nothing about the matter. Belhaj on Monday revealed more details of the lead-up to his rendition on 6 March 2004, which he says came amid his attempts to reach the UK, of which the government had become aware. He said he had first tried to travel to London from Kuala Lumpur via Beijing in late February that year. However, he was refused permission to board in Beijing, despite carrying a French passport, which does not require a pre-issued UK visa. He was returned to Kuala Lumpur where he was detained by Malaysian immigration officials. It is understood that an associate of Belhaj then visited the British embassy in Kuala Lumpur advising officials there of his intention to seek political asylum in the UK. Shortly afterwards he was freed from the detention centre and allowed to buy a ticket to London via Bangkok. By then he had disposed of his French passport, issued to a Jamal Kaderi, and was travelling on a Moroccan passport, issued in the name of Abdul al-Nabi. Holders of Moroccan passports require a pre-issued visa to enter the UK, but Belhaj said he did not apply for a visa and was allowed to board without one – a highly unusual practice. The revelation raises fresh questions about the extent of the government’s role in Belhaj’s rendition. Documents discovered last Friday reveal that a senior MI6 officer, Mark Allen, had written to Libyan spy chief Moussa Koussa congratulating him on receiving Belhaj and acknowledging that “the intelligence was British”. “I would not board until they assured me that I could travel to the UK,” Belhaj said. “They did that and I got on the plane.” Belhaj was captured by CIA officers, in co-operation with Thai authorities, inside Bangkok airport. He says he was tortured at a site in the airport grounds and then sent to Libya, where Gaddafi had long seen him as one of the biggest threats to his tyrannical four-decade rule. “The British were the second team to visit me,” he said. “They came about a month after I was returned to Libya and they were very well briefed about LIFG [Libyan Islamic Fighting Group] members in the UK. They knew everything, even their code names. They wanted to know more details about the LIFG and also about the general environment elsewhere, al-Qaida, that sort of thing. There was a woman who was leading the team, a big man and a third person who was translating. They only came one time.” Belhaj said intelligence officers from other European countries, including France, Germany and Italy, also travelled to Tripoli to speak to him inside the infamous Abu Selim prison in the south of the capital. Before each visit he was told by Libyan officers – and sometimes by Koussa – to “tell the British and others that the people they are asking about are al-Qaida”. “The Libyans told me that if I told them that I would be treated better.” He said Koussa, who fled the Gaddafi regime in March with MI6 help, would often taunt him in prison, with threats that he would die there. On one occasion Koussa ordered guards to put a shade over half of Belhaj’s cell window, to reduce what little sunlight he was getting. Files seen by the Guardian on Sunday inside the now ransacked offices of the external security service reveal that Libyan spies remained in close co-operation with the CIA and MI6 as late as November last year. The files reveal the Americans, in particular, were regularly requesting information about the identities of Libyan cellphone users. One document showed that the CIA had responded to a Libyan request about the user of a satellite phone by giving GPS references for every call made. CIA rendition MI6 Libya Torture Middle East Africa Arab and Middle East unrest CIA Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk
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