The Libya thread

[Pierre d'Achoppement]

Col Gaddafi refuses to step down, playing chess instead
By Nick Meo, Tripoli 5:45PM BST 13 Jun 2011
Col Muammar Gaddafi has rebuffed the latest international appeal to step down, instead playing chess with the eccentric Russian multi-millionaire envoy sent to convince him that he was facing an endgame.


Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, an eccentric Russian envoy who has claimed to have spoken to aliens, plays chess with Col Gaddafi in Tripoli

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the Russian head of the World Chess Federation who has claimed to have once visited an alien spaceship, was the latest, and perhaps strangest, international figure to arrive in Tripoli appealing for Gaddafi to go. Like all the others, however, Mr Ilyumzhinov's message appeared to fall on deaf ears. Instead the unlikely pair played chess together as the television cameras rolled. Colonel Gaddafi used the occasion to send out a propaganda message of calm, although ordinary Libyans may have felt slightly queasy at seeing their leader sacrificing pawns on the chessboard.

In the clip broadcast on state television, which appeared to have been shot in a government building somewhere in the capital and not in a bunker, Gaddafi appeared unsure how to play the board game. But, dressed all in black and wearing his trademark sunglasses, he did look surprisingly relaxed after four months of uprising, civil war and a Nato onslaught from the air. He is thought to spend his time constantly on the move, driving around Tripoli, and sleeping in hospitals and religious places that Nato would never dare bomb. Yesterday (Mon) Mr Ilyumzhinov told a Russian news agency that the Libyan leader had insisted that he had no intention of stepping down, regardless of the international pressure.

Mr Ilyumzhinov's visit came as Germany became the latest country to recognise the rebel National Transitional Council as the "legitimate representative" of the Libyan people. Germany becomes the 13th nation to recognise the NTC, after Britain, France the US among others. Russia recently joined the West in urging Gaddafi to step down, after months of seeming to lean towards Libya during the initial stages of the crisis. Mr Ilyumzhinov, a wealthy businessman, was leader of the Russian republic of Kalmykia from 1993 until he stepped down last October. He is best known in the wider world for his claim that he held discussions with aliens on one of their craft.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... stead.html

[Ben D]

Can't say this is surprising...having oil is certainly a mixed blessing!

Freed of Gadhafi, Libya's instability only deepens

By MAGGIE MICHAEL | Associated Press –

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — A large map of Libya hangs on the wall in the home of Idris al-Rahel, with a line down the middle dividing the country in half. Al-Rahel, a former army officer, leads a movement to declare virtual autonomy in eastern Libya, where most of the country's oil fields are located. The region's top tribal leaders meet Tuesday in the east's main city Benghazi to consider unilaterally announcing an eastern state, linked to the west only by a tenuous "federal union."

Opponents fear a declaration of autonomy could be the first step toward outright dividing the country. But some easterners say they are determined to end the domination and discrimination by the west that prevailed under strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

Al-Rahel points to the capital Tripoli on the map, in the west. "All troubles came from here," he said, "but we will not permit this to happen again."

The move shows how six months after Gadhafi's fall, the central government in Libya has proved incapable of governing at all. Other countries that shed their leaders in the Arab Spring revolts — Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen — are going through rocky transitions, but none has seen a collapse of central authority like Libya. The collapse has only worsened as cities, towns, regions, militias and tribes all act on their own, setting up their independent power centers.

After liberation from the rule of Gadhafi, Libyans dreamed their country of 6 million could become another Dubai — a state with a small population, flush with petro-dollars, that is a magnet for investment. Now they worry that it is turning more into another Somalia, a nation that has had no effective government for more than 20 years.

Libya may not face literal fragmentation, but it could be doomed to years of instability as it recovers from four decades of rule under Gadhafi, who pitted neighbor against neighbor, town against town and tribe against tribe. The resentment and bitterness he incubated is now bursting forth in general lawlessness. "What Gadhafi left in Libya for 40 years is a very, very heavy heritage," said Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the National Transitional Council, which in theory rules Libya but doesn't even hold sway in the capital Tripoli. "It's ... hard to get over it in one or two years or even five years."

Signs of the government's weakness are everywhere.

Tripoli remains under the control of various revolutionaries-turned-militiamen, who have resisted calls to integrate into a national army.
Kufra, deep in the deserts of the south, is a battleground for two rival tribes, one Arab and one African, who killed dozens in two weeks of fighting last month.

And Misrata, the country's third-largest city and just two hours' drive east of the capital, effectively rules itself, with its militias ignoring government pleas and exacting brutal revenge on anyone they believe to have supported Gadhafi. At a Misrata garage that has been turned by militiamen into a makeshift prison, one detainee, Abdel-Qader Abdel-Nabi, shows what remains of his left hand: The fingers have been cut off in a ragged line about halfway down. Abdel-Nabi said militiamen lashed his hand with a horse whip until the fingers were severed. "Then they threw me bleeding down the stairs," he said. His interrogators were trying to get him to confess to working with Gadhafi's forces during last year's civil war and collaborating in the killing of rebel fighters.
Around 800 other detainees are held in the same facility, which militiamen allowed The Associated Press to visit. The detainees are accused of involvement in killings, torture, rape and other crimes under Gadhafi. There are no courts at the moment capable of addressing the suspicions, so the detainees are entirely at the mercy of militiamen.
Medics in a clinic set up in the garage said they have treated dozens tortured in interrogations. One medic said he had seen nine prisoners whose genitalia had been cut off, and others given electric shocks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation by the militiamen.

Misrata was one of the few major cities in the west to rise up against Gadhafi last year, and paid for it with a months-long, devastating siege by regime forces. After repelling the assault, its militias joined the final march on Tripoli that captured the capital and brought down Gadhafi in August. It was Misrata militiamen who found Gadhafi in his final stronghold, the city of Sirte, and killed him in October. Now the city seems determined to decide its own fate, creating a de facto self-rule. Last month, it held its own elections for a new city council, after forcing out a self-appointed council formed in the uprising which came to be seen as corrupt and ineffective.

In the isolated southeastern town of Kufra, 600 miles (990 kilometers) from Benghazi, fighters from the powerful Zwia Arab tribe have besieged the African Tabu tribe in a battle for the past two weeks.

The Tabu, an ethnic minority indigenous to the area, were heavily suppressed under Gadhafi. After Gadhafi's fall, the National Transitional Council assigned the Tabu to police the nearby borders with Chad and Sudan to stop smuggling — a trade dominated by the Zwia. The Tabu say fighting erupted Feb. 11, after a Zwia smuggler killed six Tabu border guards. The Zwia in turn say the Tabu attacked them in an attempt to declare their own state in the area, which the Tabu deny. Zwia, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, took control of the streets and entrances to the town of 700,000, battling with Tabu gunmen. They surrounded the main Tabu district, where an Associated Press reporter saw widespread damage to homes from rockets.

The district's tiny, three-room hospital was packed with the injured, with only one doctor and 15 nurses. Empty water bottles were being used as blood bags. The doctor, Tarek Abu Bakr, said he has recorded 54 people killed. One Tabu leader, Eissa Abdel-Majed, put the toll at more than 100. After two weeks of fighting, independent militias in the region finally mediated a tenuous truce. Authorities in Tripoli could do nothing, despite bluster about sending troops to separate the sides.

The violence highlights the weakness of the National Transitional Council, made up of representatives from around the country. The Council is overseeing the transition to democracy after Gadhafi's fall, including the organizing of elections set for June. But besides having little ability to enforce decisions, it has been mired in its own divisions.

NTC chief Abdul-Jalil, a former reform-minded justice minister under Gadhafi, was largely welcomed as a clean and well-intentioned figure. But many feel he is not providing strong enough leadership. Mohammed Ali, a politician who works closely with Abdul-Jalil, described his style as that of a boxing referee. "He stands on the side watching to see who wins, then raises his hand to declare him victorious," said Ali. A frustrated Abdul-Jalil admitted mistakes. "But democracy is the reason," he told AP. "In every single decision, I have to get the vote" of 72 Council members.

The Council's attempts to put together a law governing the election are weeks behind schedule. It has put forward three drafts, each met by a storm of criticism from various factions that forced a rewrite. The election is to choose a 200-member assembly tasked with writing a new constitution and forming a government. The drafts allocate about 60 seats for the east, compared to 102 for the west, because the drafters say the breakdown reflects the larger population in the west. But for angry easterners, it smacks of the years of discrimination under Gadhafi, who focused development in the west while largely neglecting the east and its main city, Benghazi. The east was long a center of opposition to Gadhafi, the source of failed coups and assassination attempts against him — and Gadhafi punished it by depriving its cities of funds for services, health care and schools. However, the east, with its oil fields, is also the source of the vast majority of Libya's revenue. "The westerners have been milking us like a cow," said al-Rahel."They built towers, airports and hotels while we were deprived of everything."

Benghazi was the first city to shed Gadhafi's rule last year, and the entire east quickly followed. But after his death, the National Transitional Council moved from Benghazi to the capital, and formed an interim Cabinet dominated by figures from the west.
The fight is also fueling a movement to revive a federal system that existed in Libya under the monarchy before it was toppled in the 1967 coup led by Gadhafi. Under that system, Libya was divided into three states, Tripolitania in the west, Fezzan in the southwest and Cyrenaica — or Barqa, as it was called in Arabic — which encompassed the eastern half of the country.
Al-Rahel's National Federal Union movement calls for a return to that system, giving each region its own capital, parliament, police and courts. Al-Rahel cites the American model of states and a federal government.

On Tuesday, at a gathering of about 3,000 easterners in Benghazi, planners aim to announce the creation of Barqa state and call for other regions to follow in forming a federal system, said Abu Bakr Baaira, a co-founder of the group. He dismissed worries the move will break Libya apart and said Barqa would seek U.N. backing if Tripoli refuses. "Are the U.S., Switzerland and Germany divided?" he said. "We hope they don't force us to a new war and new bloodshed. This is the last thing we look for."

Easterners have already formed their army, the Barqa Supreme Military Council, made up of revolutionary fighters who rose up to battle Gadhafi last year. Their commander, Col. Hamid al-Hassi, said his forces are now willing to fight for autonomy if Tripoli doesn't grant it. "Even if we had to take over the oil fields by deploying our forces there or risk another war, we will not hesitate for the sake of Barqa," he told AP.

A spokesman for the Tripoli government, Ashour Shamis, said the NTC rejects the plan, and instead backs a decentralization that would give considerable authority to local city or district governments but preserve a strong central government.
Even some easterners are worried. Fathi al-Fadhali, a prominent writer originally from Benghazi, says Libya isn't ready for such a system. First, the country has to overcome the poisons of Gadhafi's rule and establish a civil society where rights are respected. "We are all polluted by Gadhafi's evil, violence, envy, terrorism, and conspiracies," he said, "myself included."

[Ben D]

Eastern Libya pulls away from central government

By RAMI AL-SHAHEIBI | Associated Press – 3 hrs ago

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Tribal leaders and militia commanders declared oil-rich eastern Libya a semiautonomous state on Tuesday, a unilateral move that the interim head of state called a "dangerous" conspiracy by Arab nations to tear the country apart six months after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi.

Thousands of representatives of major tribes, militia commanders and politicians made the declaration at a conference in the main eastern city of Benghazi, insisting it was not intended to divide the country. They said they want their region to remain part of a united Libya, but needed to do this to stop decades of discrimination against the east.

The conference declared that the eastern state, known as Barqa, would have its own parliament, police force, courts and capital — Benghazi, the country's second largest city — to run its own affairs. Foreign policy, the national army and oil resources would be left to the central government in the capital Tripoli in western Libya. Barqa would cover nearly half the country, from the center to the Egyptian border in the east and down to the borders with Chad and Sudan in the south.

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the Tripoli-based interim central government known as the National Transitional Council, warned the declaration "leads to danger" of eventually breaking up the North African nation of 6 million. But he also said it was to be expected, because the east played a pivotal role in ending Gadhafi's rule.

"Some Arab nations, unfortunately, have supported and encouraged this to happen," he said, without naming any countries. "These nations are funding this kind of unacceptable strife," he added at a news conference in Tripoli. "What happened today is the beginning of a conspiracy against Libya and Libyans. "

Asked by The Associated Press, Abdul-Jalil's office refused to specify which Arab nations were allegedly supporting division in Libya.
The interim leader has not in the past blamed any Arab nation for meddling, while praising Gulf nations like Qatar, which was supportive of the rebels fighting Gadhafi.

Abdul-Jalil appealed to Libyans for patience and resolve in the face of the country's mounting problems.

[Searcher08]

This is not good news. The tribal faultlines that were suppressed are splitting apart.
For all his insanity, part of the Colonel's function was like Tito - to create a unifying force that held the centre. Now that that is gone, the systems direction of flow will be to fracture. There is no Mandela-like figure articulating peace and justice and forgiveness.
The Berbers are probably going to try for autonomy as well.
The next stage will be for internecine resource wars and a collapse of the consistent relations with the outside world...
Meanwhile, all of the hate and brutality of the old regime has been taken up by the revenge filled brutalized freedom fighters. The energy needed to overthrow the old is not the same as designing the new...

[kenoma]

This is not good news. The tribal faultlines that were suppressed are splitting apart.
For all his insanity, part of the Colonel's function was like Tito - to create a unifying force that held the centre. Now that that is gone, the systems direction of flow will be to fracture. There is no Mandela-like figure articulating peace and justice and forgiveness.

Thanks for providing the template for the BBC World Service-type bullshit-offensive that has little relationship with reality.
All this deep-seated-tribal-tensions blather is just thin cover for NATO/oil industry coordinated oil-grabs. The 'tribes' have nothing to do with ancient Lybian history; this is about a cynical business arrangement.

[Searcher08]

This is not good news. The tribal faultlines that were suppressed are splitting apart.
For all his insanity, part of the Colonel's function was like Tito - to create a unifying force that held the centre. Now that that is gone, the systems direction of flow will be to fracture. There is no Mandela-like figure articulating peace and justice and forgiveness.

Thanks for providing the template for the BBC World Service-type bullshit-offensive that has little relationship with reality.
All this deep-seated-tribal-tensions blather is just thin cover for NATO/oil industry coordinated oil-grabs. The 'tribes' have nothing to do with ancient Lybian history; this is about a cynical business arrangement.

'Blather' FAIL
Thanks for providing the template for your own unique brand of sanctimonious pseudo-drivel (that reminds me of talking with lobotomized 19yr old Trots from the 70s). I didn't realise NATO was in the oil business, but stand corrected. Cant make out what is being expressed more consistently, vindictiveness or just plain stupidity. But it appears to be an equal combination of them both in your case. Ideological... wankery. Yes, that's it.

Let's have YOUR specific predictions. Or is it easier to hide behind your fogweed?

My prediction is a low grade ongoing civil war, with greater ongoing externalised funding driving multiple fractures across religious, tribal and ethnic lines; probably not as bad as Syria but worse than Iraq, with the average Libyan badly effected by it. I predict a less and less effective and relevant NTC, whose relations with other countries start to fall apart and if it drags on, a move towards a Somalia set up where some see hardline Islam as providing order.

A business bonanza? Bullshit

[Ben D]

No countries named yet, but no doubt it will come to the surface soon...

NTC says some Arab states aid sedition in eastern Libya

Wed Mar 7, 2012 3:35AM GMT

Libya’s interim government has accused some Arab countries of supporting and financing the tribal leaders, who have declared autonomy in the east of the country.

"Some sister Arab nations unfortunately are supporting and financing this sedition that is happening in the east," Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the National Transitional Council (NTC) chief, told reporters at a press conference in the capital Tripoli on Tuesday.

"What is happening today is the start of a conspiracy against the country...This is a very dangerous matter that threatens national unity," he warned.

Jalil, however, did not name the countries alleged to be involved.

[AlicetheKurious]

No countries named yet, but no doubt it will come to the surface soon...

When Arab politicians accuse "sister Arab nations" of nefarious doings but refuse to name names, it's a safe bet they mean Saudi Arabia (and, in recently years, that includes Qatar and other oil-rich monarchies). The cowards.

[Searcher08]

No countries named yet, but no doubt it will come to the surface soon...

When Arab politicians accuse "sister Arab nations" of nefarious doings but refuse to name names, it's a safe bet they mean Saudi Arabia (and, in recently years, that includes Qatar and other oil-rich monarchies). The cowards.

Alice, what is your 'prognosis' for Libya?

[AlicetheKurious]

This is not good news. The tribal faultlines that were suppressed are splitting apart.
For all his insanity, part of the Colonel's function was like Tito - to create a unifying force that held the centre. Now that that is gone, the systems direction of flow will be to fracture. There is no Mandela-like figure articulating peace and justice and forgiveness.

Thanks for providing the template for the BBC World Service-type bullshit-offensive that has little relationship with reality.
All this deep-seated-tribal-tensions blather is just thin cover for NATO/oil industry coordinated oil-grabs. The 'tribes' have nothing to do with ancient Lybian history; this is about a cynical business arrangement.

'Blather' FAIL
Thanks for providing the template for your own unique brand of sanctimonious pseudo-drivel (that reminds me of talking with lobotomized 19yr old Trots from the 70s). I didn't realise NATO was in the oil business, but stand corrected. Cant make out what is being expressed more consistently, vindictiveness or just plain stupidity. But it appears to be an equal combination of them both in your case. Ideological... wankery. Yes, that's it.

Let's have YOUR specific predictions. Or is it easier to hide behind your fogweed?

My prediction is a low grade ongoing civil war, with greater ongoing externalised funding driving multiple fractures across religious, tribal and ethnic lines; probably not as bad as Syria but worse than Iraq, with the average Libyan badly effected by it. I predict a less and less effective and relevant NTC, whose relations with other countries start to fall apart and if it drags on, a move towards a Somalia set up where some see hardline Islam as providing order.

A business bonanza? Bullshit

Tribal affiliations exist, but their power and significance depends on their ability to deliver economic opportunities and access to services (including security), or whether these can be accessed solely through the institutions of a state. The current chaos in Libya is not the result of tribal or ethnic divisions -- the NATO powers bombed Libya, destroying much of the country's civilian infrastructure (in some cases, entire towns were flattened), overthrew the government, recruited a bunch of mercenaries (many of them criminals or fringe fanatics), lavished them with weapons and logistical support, and unleashed them on a helpless population. These mercenaries and opportunistic criminals have been especially having a field day raping, killing and robbing members of tribes or towns associated with the Qaddafy regime, and visible minorities like dark-skinned Libyans. It's understandable that people would try to seek refuge and security with their tribe.

Kenoma has a point: the explanation that "those people" need a dictator to keep them from killing each other along tribal and ethnic lines is not only simplistic and racist, it is the standard cover story used to obscure the devastating role of Western imperialism in many African countries.

I don't think Syria will fracture along religious, tribal or ethnic lines -- the Syrians have had ample time to observe the US/Israel's strategy in Lebanon, Iraq and now Libya, and don't seem to be falling for it. Also, the Ikhwan/Salafist elements that were recruited and promoted to head the Syrian insurgency showed their true face too soon and alienated large segments of the Syrian population, even among those who initially supported them. As for Iraq, the US occupiers did everything possible to dismantle the Iraqi state and promote sectarian divisions, including physically walling Sunnis and Shi'ites off from each other against their will. In this, they have utterly failed. They've had slightly more success with the Kurds, but since the American troops have withdrawn, there are signs that this may be reversed.

Alice, what is your 'prognosis' for Libya?

I don't really have one. The one thing I know is that the whole region is so turbulent right now that there's no way to predict anything. But my feeling is that, despite the current mess, people's hopes have been awakened. For the first time in decades, they've allowed themselves to dream of freedom, and to believe that it's possible. That's not everything, but it's huge. They'll fight for it, and they'll keep inspiring each other not to give up. That, alone, is a reason for optimism.

[Searcher08]

Thank you.

Kenoma has a point: the explanation that "those people" need a dictator to keep them from killing each other along tribal and ethnic lines is not only simplistic and racist, it is the standard cover story used to obscure the devastating role of Western imperialism in many African countries.

I agree, I myself was not talking about a dictator, I was talking about a decent, inspiring leader like Mandela.

My take-away for what you wrote is one of it worth being optimistic - from someone immersed in it in the maelstrom itself .

[seemslikeadream]

Secret documents reveal MI5 agents betrayed Libyan dissidents to Gaddafi spies in London rendezvous just 700 yards from Harrods
British spies supplied the Libyan dictator's secret agents with intelligence, mobile phones and an upmarket London safe house
Experts say the explosive documents suggest breaches of the Geneva Conventions, the Human Rights Act and criminal law
By ROBERT VERKAIK, BARBARA JONES and DAVID ROSE
PUBLISHED: 17:00 EST, 21 April 2012 | UPDATED: 20:52 EST, 21 April 2012


MI5 betrayed enemies of Colonel Gaddafi given refuge in Britain in a covert joint operation with Libyan spies working on UK soil, documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal.
Gaddafi’s secret agents were supplied by MI5 with intelligence, secure mobile phones and a luxurious safe house in the heart of London’s Knightsbridge.
The extraordinary revelations emerge from hundreds of secret documents unearthed from Libyan spymasters’ archives after the Gaddafi regime was toppled – with British military help – last year.
Shockingly, they reveal tactics of intimidation and coercion – and expose the British agents’ specific fears that their actions might be reported by the press in the UK.

Under pressure: Tony Blair with Jack Straw in 2005, and some of the documents seen by the MoS, below

The documents disclose that MI5 betrayed the confidentiality that all refugees are promised when they apply for asylum, and told the Libyans that the targets could be threatened with deportation to Libya if they refused to co-operate.
The revelations will cause a political storm. David Davis, the senior Tory MP, said they made clear that the 2004 operation to arrange the ‘rendition’ of former Gaddafi opponent Abdel Hakim Belhadj from Bangkok to Tripoli was ‘merely the start of a continuing intelligence saga’.

He added: ‘The documents seem to say that British agencies exposed people who had been given refuge here to the very people they had fled. This is an appalling betrayal of Britain’s obligations and traditions, apparently for reasons of realpolitik, not national security. What the documents reveal is coercion at best, and at worst blackmail.’
He said it was ‘essential’ that the Scotland Yard investigation into the case of Mr Belhadj – who is suing former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for allegedly authorising his kidnap and rendition – is extended to include the joint MI5-Libya operations.
Experts in refugee law say the documents imply flagrant breaches of the Geneva Conventions on refugees, the Human Rights Act and the ordinary criminal law.
Lord Carlile, QC, the former reviewer of UK anti-terror laws, said the allegations were ‘serious’ and called for an inquiry.

Revelations: The documents were unearthed from Libyan spymasters' archives after Colonel Gaddafi was toppled with the help of British forces
A senior former intelligence officer said it was ‘difficult to imagine’ that the joint operations were not sanctioned by Ministers and it was likely that the Home and Foreign Secretaries were involved, as well as the Prime Minister – at the time, Tony Blair.
But the then Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said: ‘I don’t think I knew anything about this. I certainly have no recollection of it.’ She thought that as an ‘operational matter’ it would not have needed ministerial authorisation.
Lord Reid, who was Home Secretary, failed to return phone calls asking for comment. A spokesman for Mr Blair said he had ‘no recollection’ of the operations.
The documents reveal meetings between the British and Libyan services in both Tripoli and London, and visits by the Libyan agents to make ‘approaches’ to their targets in London and Manchester in August and October 2006.
They make clear that the Libyans had at least some success, and that some of the refugees they approached did agree to co-operate.
MI5, the documents say, wanted then to turn the refugees into sources of their own, in the belief that the body to which they belonged – the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group – was linked to Al Qaeda, and a threat to UK national security.
But, according to the minutes of one meeting, MI5 also knew that its decision to do business with a regime that, despite having abandoned its WMD programme, was still torturing and murdering its opponents, was controversial and had to be kept secret.
Last night a security source defended co-operation with Libya, saying: ‘Many of Jihadist fighters picked up in Afghanistan after 2001 were Libyans. They posed a threat and had to be closely monitored.’
Just 700 yeards from Harrods, a covert rendezvous between Libyan spies and MI5 agent Caroline sparks demand for criminal inquiry
Special Investigation by Robert Verkaik, Barbara Jones and David Rose
As MI5 had promised, it had left nothing to chance. Waiting for the two Libyan intelligence officers as they got off the plane at Heathrow was Caroline, the charming Security Service operative they knew from her recent visit to Tripoli.
No need for the agents to wait in line at immigration: Caroline – whose full name, together with that of other UK officers, The Mail on Sunday has chosen not to publish – met them ‘airside’, and they bypassed the usual formalities.
She was carrying two, prepaid, secure mobile phones, one for each of the Libyans, Colonel Najmuddin Ajeli and Ahmed Abdanabi.

Upmarket: MI5 accommodated the Libyan intelligence officers in a luxury serviced flat near Harrods in Knightsbridge, London
Naturally, Caroline had organised transport: an MI5 car in which she escorted them to MI5’s safe house – a luxury service flat at one of the best addresses in London, in the heart of Knightsbridge.
This was almost certainly in Egerton Place, a brief stroll from Harrods, and less than a mile from St James’s Square, where WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot by a Libyan diplomat in 1984.
Next day, August 10, 2006, the joint operation between MI5 and the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s External Security Organisation would begin. Meanwhile, Ajeli and Abdanabi were free to enjoy a night on the town.
Details of the two Libyans’ visit are contained in a new and extraordinary cache of documents, classified UK/Libya Secret, unearthed in Gaddafi’s archives after his regime was toppled – thanks in large part to RAF airstrikes – last year.
The documents reveal that collusion between the dictator’s security agency, a byword for torture, brutality and murder throughout the Middle East, and its British counterparts was far greater than hitherto realised.
The case of Abdel Hakim Belhadj, who is suing the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for allegedly authorising his illegal ‘rendition’ from Thailand to prolonged torture in Libya in 2004, has already become notorious.

Serious as the Belhadj case is, however, in that instance the British supplied intelligence only about his whereabouts: the actual rendition was done from a distant foreign country by the American CIA.
But the new documents disclose that for at least two years after that, MI5 and MI6 developed a close and active working relationship with the Libyans.
It extended to flagrant breaches of the law that is supposed to protect political refugees, and ‘joint operations’ in which such people – whose families and friends were vulnerable to savage reprisals in Libya – were cold-bloodedly ‘targeted’ on British soil, where they thought they were safe, by the Libyan service, with direct assistance from MI5.
This breaks every convention of acceptable behaviour between governments.
‘When you ask for asylum in Britain, the form you fill in promises that the mere fact of applying will be treated by the British Government as strictly confidential, since if it became known, your friends and family would be exposed to persecution,’ a top QC and refugee law expert said yesterday.
‘But these documents suggest that not only was this rule ignored, but refugees were threatened with deportation if they refused to co-operate with the very regime they had fled – a core breach of both the 1951 Geneva Convention, and the Human Rights Act. It also appears they were coerced. Any Britons involved could also have committed the offence of misconduct in a public office.’
The documents contain a detailed narrative of the 2006 operation mounted by Caroline, Ajeli, Abdanabi and their colleagues. It began with a meeting in Tripoli on May 17, attended by X, an MI6 officer stationed in Libya (whom The Mail on Sunday has agreed not to name), Caroline from MI5, and the two Libyans who came to London in August, along with others whose names are not recorded in the meeting’s minutes – which were taken in Arabic by a member of the Libyan service.
‘We are here with you to share some co-operation and suggestions to work with your secret department,’ Caroline explained. Right from the outset, she abandoned any pretence that asylum seekers should be protected.
According to the minutes, she said: ‘Target 2 could become a very good source and we can pressure him to work for us because he’s not a British citizen.’ Another individual is identified as a possible target because he is ‘very emotional’ and would be deeply affected if any of his friends were to be arrested. The document records: ‘He could be a good source because he works in a library inside a mosque and he has close links to Libyan Islamic Fighting Group [then a banned group which operated as a political party opposing Gaddafi, and from whose ranks many of last year’s revolutionary fighters were drawn].’

After Caroline left Tripoli, plans were made for the August visit by the two Libyans. MI6’s officer X sent the details of its logistics in a memo to General Sadegh Krema, the head of the Libyan service’s external relations section, on August 8, the day before they left. As well as the safe house and the phones, MI5 would be providing lunch, and a series of meetings to formulate ‘operational plans’ for approaching their main target.
The Mail on Sunday is aware of the identity of this person, who was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) based in Didsbury, in Manchester, and an habitué of the Didsbury mosque, one of the main centres of anti-Gaddafi activity in Britain. We also have the minutes of the meeting held between the Libyans, Caroline, her colleague Tony and other MI5 staff at MI5 headquarters on August 11.
MI5 justified its participation in these operations by asserting that the LIFG was a jihadist group with links to Al Qaeda, and hence a threat to UK security – although it is a matter of record that the only Libyan ever arrested or charged with any terrorist offence committed in Britain was not from the opposition at all: the sole example is Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber freed on compassionate grounds nearly three years ago when he was said to have three months to live. In 2004, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that the LIFG was only interested in opposing Gaddafi – not mounting terrorist attacks in Britain.
Be that as it may, MI5 knew that by working so closely with Gaddafi’s agents it was taking a risk. According to the minutes, one of the MI5 staff said: ‘The target person has the right to make a complaint or seek police protection. British intelligence must be careful how they approach a target because this individual could call on human rights or the press and cause a security scandal that exposes the co-operation between British and Libyan secret services.’
The minutes suggest that MI5 preferred to use the carrot, rather than the stick, in inducing the target to start giving up information about his associates: ‘We might allow him to visit his family in Libya, then return to Britain. We could offer to help clear his name with Libyan authorities. We could offer to help with citizenship or residency. This could open the door to his co-operation. We could enter his office frequently, do business with him and open the door to further conversations.’
But if that didn’t work, then they could resort to coercion: ‘Libyan operatives could ask him [the target asylum seeker] about problems at home in Libya or in Britain.
‘They offer to help in return for giving information we want about other targets. If he refuses, British police will arrest him and accuse him of associating with Libyan secret agents. He will be told that as a non-resident of Britain he could be deported if found guilty.’
A memo dated September 27 from officer X to General Krema makes clear that the August operation had gone well, and suggests further activity against other targets in Didsbury. The Libyan agent Najmuddin Ajeli had ‘established contact’ with members of the Didsbury mosque, and the next step would be ‘joint casework between our services’.
On October 14, Ajeli and Abdanabi flew back to Britain. Another unnamed MI5 officer, says a further memo, was due to meet them, though if there were any problems, they could call Caroline.
This time, the plan was to set up further meetings with the target in Didsbury, with the hope of introducing him to MI5. The Libyans were not to stay at the safe house, however, but at the five-star City Inn Hotel, which conveniently is next to MI5’s headquarters on the Thames.
There the documentary record ends. But former Libyan dissidents who are now supporters of the revolution say they know of several individuals who were approached by Libyan intelligence and MI5 while refugees in Britain, and threatened in the ways the documents suggest.
Gareth Peirce, the solicitor who acted for several Libyan refugees, said yesterday: ‘This has been a common methodology. If you think someone is vulnerable, facing deportation, you exploit that. It is a common currency I have come across again and again.’
SPIED ON BY UK AGENTS WORKING FOR GADDAFI

Shaken: The accountant who was spied on
A Libyan accountant who lived in England for ten years was spied on by British Intelligence working with Colonel Gaddafi’s tyrannical regime.
Granted asylum here in 2002 as a member of Libya’s opposition, he has discovered his mobile phone was monitored and information about him and his wife sent to Libya’s External Security
Organisation (ESO) in a sinister exchange that ended only with Gaddafi’s death.
He believes one phone conversation he had with fellow Libyan dissident Abu Bakr Ighrebel led to Ighrebel’s arrest, imprisonment and torture for five years in Tripoli’s Abu Salim detention facility.
The accountant, who lived in Pinner, North London, wishes to remain anonymous because of security fears for family members in Britain.
He was shaken to discover a file containing his personal information and a photograph, which he recalls submitting for his British passport application in 2002, among documents taken from the ESO building after Tripoli fell last year.
The Mail on Sunday has seen the file and had it independently translated. A series of internal memos written in Arabic by Libyan agents gives feedback on meetings with their British counterparts. One memo reports a conversation the accountant had in 2007 with Ighrebel, who sought advice about seeking asylum in Britain.
Another, written at the ESO and dated December 16, 2007, reports the British as telling the Libyan agents: ‘We do not think you should take any action towards the Libyan user of this phone number because it may expose our operation monitoring this individual.’
The accountant said: ‘Libyan agents wrote back claiming I had been in Sudan working with Osama Bin Laden and that I had been seriously ill and Bin Laden had paid my hospital bills. This is totally untrue.’

[seemslikeadream]

Blair’s ‘deal in desert’ with Gaddafi



April 23 2012 at 10:59am

REUTERS
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair shakes hands with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi near Gaddafi's home town of Sirte May 29, 2007.
Tony Blair made the “wrong judgment” when he cosied up to Colonel Gaddafi, his former attorney general said yesterday.

Lord Goldsmith spoke out after allegations that the UK’s intelligence agencies betrayed opponents of the dictator’s brutal regime to Libyan spies under the Labour government.

Documents found in Tripoli show that MI5 launched a covert operation on British soil to target Libyan exiles who had been granted asylum in the UK. They were threatened with deportation unless they collaborated with the Gaddafi regime.

The papers, obtained by the Mail on Sunday, revealed that international rules guaranteeing confidentiality to refugees were betrayed between 2004 and 2006, after Mr Blair sealed his “deal in the desert” with Colonel Gaddafi.

Lord Goldsmith, who was attorney general between 2001 and 2007, said the dissidents’ betrayal was a “serious issue” and called for a full investigation. He told Sky News: “I didn’t know anything about this particular case. I’m very troubled by these allegations. We’ve obviously got to see what comes out.”

He said questions must now be asked about “the issue of what was going on with Libya”. The Blair government re-established diplomatic ties with Gaddafi after he agreed to abandon his nuclear and chemical weapons programmes in 2004.

“Given what we subsequently know about Gaddafi, that’s a fair thing to be looking into and I think we do need to look into it further,” Lord Goldsmith said.”I think the problem was that Gaddafi did do something which was important in this period, which was accepting that he would get rid of his weapons of mass destruction. We thought - the world thought - he had turned for the good, but he hadn’t. That was, it turns out, a wrong judgment.”

The MI5 revelations come after another Libyan opposition leader, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, announced he was suing former foreign secretary Jack Straw, MI6 and the Government over his rendition to Libya for torture in 2004. His lawyers are also preparing a case against Mr Blair.

Mr Straw has recently refused to comment on his role in such decisions, while Mr Blair has repeatedly said he does not recall the Belhadj case. Yesterday, the former prime minister’s spokesman said he has “no recollection” of MI5’s role operating alongside Libyan intelligence.

Scotland Yard is already investigating whether MI6 officers and ministers were complicit in Mr Belhadj’s torture. Security sources said it was ‘difficult to imagine’ that joint operations were not sanctioned by senior politicians. - Daily Mail

[Ben D]

Knew too much.....

Libyan oil minister who defected from Gaddafi regime found dead in Vienna

Associated Press in Vienna
guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 April 2012 00.54 BST


Shukri Ghanem had been living in Vienna ever since he defected from Gaddafi regime, even after it was toppled and the late dictator killed by rebels last year. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

The former Libyan oil minister who last year announced he was defecting from Muammar Gaddafi's regime to support the rebels has been found dead in Vienna.

Police said the corpse of Shukri Ghanem, 69, was found floating in the Danube near his home, which he apparently left early morning on Sunday.

The body was dressed though it carried no identification; it also showed no signs of violence, but an autopsy will be carried out, a police spokesman said: "There would be no signs of violence if someone pushed him in. But it is also possible that he became ill and fell into the water." Police were alerted by a passerby who saw his body floating near his Vienna residence, close to the UN offices in the Austrian capital.

Ghanem left Libya for Tunisia and then Europe in June as insurgents were pushing to topple Gaddafi. He subsequently announced he would support the rebels.

With advanced degrees in law and economics, Ghanem served in senior positions at the Vienna-based Opec before his appointment as Libyan prime minister in June 2003, an office he held until 2006 when he took the oil ministry portfolio.

Considered a member of Gaddafi's inner circle until his defection, he insisted that Libya bore no responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.

He also repudiated Libyan responsibility in the 1984 shooting during a protest in front the country's embassy in London, in which British constable Yvonne Fletcheran was killed. The incident led to the severing of British-Libyan relations.

Ghanem continued to live in Vienna after Gaddafi was ousted, and later killed in the Nato-backed rebel campaign last year.

[Aldebaran]

Jamming Tripoli: Inside Moammar Gadhafi’s Secret Surveillance Network

By Matthieu Aikins
Email Author
May 18, 2012 |
3:43 pm |
Categories: Censorship, Crowd Control, Cyber Warfare, cyberbullying, Miscellaneous, politics, Social Movements, Surveillance

Photo: Michael Christopher Brown

The Internet enabled surveillance on a scale that would have been unimaginable with the old tools of phone taps and informants.
Michael Christopher Brown

He once was known as al-Jamil—the Handsome One—for his chiseled features and dark curls. But four decades as dictator had considerably dimmed the looks of Moammar Gadhafi. At 68, he now wore a face lined with deep folds, and his lips hung slack, crested with a sparse mustache. When he stepped from the shadows of his presidential palace to greet Ghaida al-Tawati, whom he had summoned that evening by sending one of his hulking female bodyguards to fetch her, it was the first time she had seen him without his trademark sunglasses; his eyes were hooded and rheumy. The dictator was dressed in a white Puma tracksuit and slippers. How tired and thin he looked in person, Tawati thought.

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It was February 10, 2011, and Libya was in an uproar. Two months earlier, in neighboring Tunisia, a street vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi had set himself on fire after a policewoman beat him and confiscated his wares. It was the beginning of the Arab Spring, a series of uprisings, revolutions, and civil wars that would radically alter the politics of the Middle East. In Libya, opponents of the Gadhafi regime had called for a day of protest on February 17, to mark the anniversary of a 2006 protest in the city of Benghazi, where security forces had killed 11 demonstrators and wounded dozens more.

Tawati was one of the most outspoken dissidents blogging openly from inside Libya. Thirty-four years old, with a gravelly childlike voice and singsong laugh that belied her deep stubbornness, she had come to political consciousness during the mid-2000s, at a time when Gadhafi, seeking reconciliation with the West, had ceased using his most heavy-handed tactics of repression—such as outright massacres—and allowed a modicum of public dissent. During her university days, when the Internet had begun to ease the country’s isolation, Tawati took naturally to the roles of gadfly and outsider. Her parents had divorced when she was young; in Libya’s deeply conservative culture, growing up with a single mother made her a social outcast. The injustice she experienced as a child led her to critique the injustice of the dictatorial regime, particularly on women’s issues—for example, she blogged about a sexual abuse scandal at a home for unwed mothers institutionalized by the Gadhafi government. Over time she won a modest following online. As the planned protests of February 17 approached, Tawati, always prone to impassioned rhetoric, blogged that if Libyans failed to turn out for the demonstrations she would burn herself just as Bouazizi had done. Somehow Gadhafi himself had heard news of this threat and decided he needed to meet her.

Despite the dictator’s haggard appearance, his manner remained confident and effusive. When he wanted to be, Gadhafi was a legendary charmer, a man deeply at ease with ordinary Libyans. He shook Tawati’s hand and patted her shoulder paternally, directing her to sit next to him on the sofa. He asked her about her health, her family, where she was from. He asked her who had taught her to write. She told him about her demands for greater openness and accountability in Libya, taking care not to criticize him directly. He seemed sympathetic, nodding at various points. Finally she worked up the courage to ask him why the government had blocked YouTube several months earlier.

Gadhafi acted oblivious. “Is it switched off?” he asked.

She complained to him about the way that allies of his regime had treated her. Ever since she’d started blogging under her own name in 2007, Tawati had been harassed—and worse. “Ghaida al-Tawati, the goat of the Internet,” read one Facebook page her attackers created; a string of graphic sexual comments were posted underneath her photo. More bewildering, though, was the invasion of privacy: Somehow, emails of hers had been leaked onto the Internet, even displayed on state television, she told Gadhafi. She had been accused of working with foreign agents. Her reputation as a woman had been smeared.

“If you want to get married,” he interjected, “we’ll get you married to the best man.”

“I’m not interested in getting married,” she replied.

“So, have you made an appointment to burn yourself, then?” Gadhafi asked suddenly, a wry smile curling his lips.

Tawati said that she hadn’t—yet.

“What do you really want from me?” he asked with exasperation.

“You already know the reason why people are demonstrating,” she replied.

Gadhafi’s gaze settled on her for a moment. He asked her to come work for him. The two of them would solve these problems together, he said.

It was an odd show of vulnerability, this bid to co-opt her rather than threaten or crush her. This was the moment, Tawati would later say, that she realized the uprising would succeed. The old man didn’t understand just how committed she and other dissidents were to his downfall. In Libya, as in Egypt and elsewhere, the drive toward revolution drew much of its energy from young, educated activists like Tawati, for whom online tools served as an unprecedented means for communicating and rallying support.

But like Tawati, these activists would suffer greatly at the hands of Gadhafi’s spy service, whose own capabilities had been heightened by 21st-century technology. By now, it’s well known that the Arab Spring showed the promise of the Internet as a crucible for democratic activism. But, in the shadows, a second narrative unfolded, one that demonstrated the Internet’s equal potential for government surveillance and repression on a scale unimaginable with the old analog techniques of phone taps and informants. Today, with Gadhafi dead and a provisional government of former rebels in charge, we can begin to uncover the secret, high tech spying machine that helped the dictator and his regime cling to power.

The regime had been following Tawati online for years, and the harassment of her was mostly orchestrated by a group that came to be called the Electronic Army. According to former members, this loose organization was founded several years ago when Mutassim Gadhafi, one of the dictator’s playboy sons, had been enraged after videos of him attending a nude beach party on New Year’s Eve were posted online. Mutassim, who chaired Libya’s National Security Council, created a group of Internet users, some paid, some volunteer, to try to take down those videos and other anti-Gadhafi material posted online. They bombarded YouTube with flags for copyright infringement and inappropriate content; they waged a constant back-and-forth battle with critics of the regime, whom they would barrage with emails and offensive comments.

After all the cruelties she had endured as a child, Tawati could deal with the insults directed at her. But it stunned her when, in August 2010, some of her private email exchanges with other dissidents somehow got leaked to Hala Misrati, a notorious TV propagandist and one of the Electronic Army’s apparent leaders. How had her accounts been compromised, she wondered?

The answer, though she would not know it until after the regime fell, lay in a secret deal Gadhafi had made with a company called Amesys—a subsidiary of the French defense firm Bull SA—for technology that would allow his spy services to access all the data flowing through Libya’s Internet system. In a proposal to the regime dated November 11, 2006, Amesys (then called i2e Technologies) laid out the specifications for its comprehensive Homeland Security Program. It included encrypted communications systems, bugged cell phones (with sample phones included), and, at the plan’s heart, a proprietary system called Eagle for monitoring the country’s Internet traffic.

A related Amesys presentation explained the significance of Eagle to a government seeking to control activities inside its borders. Warning of an “increasing need of high-level intelligence in the constant struggle against criminals and terrorism,” the document touted Eagle’s ability to capture bulk Internet traffic passing through conventional, satellite, and mobile phone networks, and then to store that data in a filterable and searchable database. This database, in turn, could be integrated with other sources of intelligence, such as phone recordings, allowing security personnel to pick through audio and data from a given person all at once, in real time or by historical time stamp. In other words, instead of choosing targets and monitoring them, officials could simply sweep up everything, sort it by time and target, and then browse through it later at their leisure. The title of the presentation—”From Lawful to Massive Interception”—gestured at the vast difference between so-called lawful intercept (traditional law enforcement surveillance based on warrants for specific phone numbers or IP addresses) and what Amesys was offering.

In 2007, Philippe Vannier, former head of Amesys and current chief executive of Bull, reportedly met with Abdullah Senussi, Libya’s head of intelligence, in Tripoli. A deal was signed that year, and beginning in 2008 Amesys engineers and technicians, many of them former French military personnel, traveled to Libya to set up several data and monitoring centers for the country’s Internal Security service. According to engineers at Libyan Internet provider LTT, two high-bandwidth “mirrors” were installed—one on the country’s main fiber-optic trunk and one inside the DSL switchboard—to copy all Internet traffic and feed it into the Eagle system, which became operational in 2009.

One of the monitoring centers, known as HQ 2, was located on the ground floor of a tan six-story Internal Security building on Sikka Street in Tripoli. The dreaded structure was sometimes called the Heretics House, after the Counter-Heresy Office—Gadhafi’s squad charged with combating Islamists—which was based there. Inside, a sign on an interior door bore the logos of both Amesys and the Libyan government and warned: help keep our classified business secret. don’t discuss classified information out of the hq. Behind it, analysts sat at their terminals and used a web browser to log on to the Eagle system, where they would peruse their latest intercepts or search for new targets to monitor using keywords, phone numbers, or email and IP addresses. The system was capable of collecting email, chat and voice-over-IP conversations, file transfers, and even browsing histories from anyone who used broadband or dialup Internet in Libya. The analysts could call up social-network diagrams for the targets they were hunting, with the links between each suspect showing the frequency and type of communication. Emails of interest were labeled “follow-up” for the security services.

A filing room with shelves of pink folders held thousands of printed-out emails and chat logs, case files with fingerprints and photographs of the targets, and transcripts of phone intercepts faxed to the center. The email intercepts (which are marked “https://eagle/interceptions” at the top, indicating they were printed from the Eagle system) typically contain the IP addresses and port numbers, and sometimes even usernames and passwords. They list everything from mundane conversations about building maintenance to business deals to political discussions among dissidents—a vast catalog of private lives.
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At dusk on August 20, 2011, a tremendous cry rose up from the loudspeakers of the mosques of Tripoli: Allahu Akbar. God is great. After months of civil war, the rebel forces had besieged the capital. For the past few days, a rumor had spread through the city that the signal for the final assault would come from the mosques; now that call had arrived, resounding through the city streets. Deep in the festering cells of Ain Zara prison, Rabia Ragoubi, gaunt and filthy from seven months of imprisonment and abuse, raised his head and smiled. Not far from the walls of Gadhafi’s complex, Ghaida al-Tawati—herself recently released after three months in a different prison—watched as her brother and the men of their neighborhood unearthed a cache of AK-47s they had hidden in the old Christian cemetery. She climbed to the roof for a better view as her brother shouldered his rifle and ran off to join the battle in the presidential palace.

Over the next few days, all the important government sites fell into rebel hands. The prisons were liberated, the palace captured. (Gadhafi went into hiding, but death would find him two months later.) Even the intelligence centers, for so long black holes of terror, were forced to yield up their secrets. Later, researchers from Human Rights Watch and The Wall Street Journal obtained a massive cache of documents from their archives.

Wired reviewed many of these documents and conducted extensive interviews with dissidents and former regime officials to reveal the extent of Gadhafi’s spying on his people. Because the colonel, in his paranoia, liked to create multiple, rival agencies with overlapping capabilities, it’s difficult to get a comprehensive view of just how his surveillance empire was structured. There is, however, substantial documentary and eyewitness evidence of the involvement of a number of important multinational companies.

Amesys, with its Eagle system, was just one of Libya’s partners in repression. A South African firm called VASTech had set up a sophisticated monitoring center in Tripoli that snooped on all inbound and outbound international phone calls, gathering and storing 30 million to 40 million minutes of mobile and landline conversations each month. ZTE Corporation, a Chinese firm whose gear powered much of Libya’s cell phone infrastructure, is believed to have set up a parallel Internet monitoring system for External Security: Photos from the basement of a makeshift surveillance site, obtained from Human Rights Watch, show components of its ZXMT system, comparable to Eagle. American firms likely bear some blame, as well. On February 15, just prior to the revolution, regime officials reportedly met in Barcelona with officials from Narus, a Boeing subsidiary, to discuss Internet-filtering software. And the Human Rights Watch photos also clearly show a manual for a satellite phone monitoring system sold by a subsidiary of L-3 Communications, a defense conglomerate based in New York. (Amesys, VASTech, ZTE and Narus did not respond to multiple interview requests; L-3 declined to comment.)

It’s true that all these systems were sold to Gadhafi at a time when sanctions had been lifted and the regime was ostensibly collaborating with Western intelligence agencies. The export restrictions that limit the sale of arms to rogue nations do not currently cover this kind of surveillance gear, which is how some of it has turned up in countries like Syria and Myanmar, where Western weapons sales are forbidden. (A bill put before Congress this year, the Global Online Freedom Act, could end this disparity for American companies. Also, in April, President Obama issued an executive order that authorized visa bans and financial restrictions against foreigners—or foreign companies—that provide surveillance technology to Iran or Syria.) “Massive intercept” technology, like countless other innovations of the West’s military-industrial complex, has now become cheap, small, and simple enough to export as a commercial, off-the-shelf technology, for sale to any government that can cough up a few tens of millions of dollars. Today you can run an approximation of 1984 out of a couple of rooms filled with server racks. And that’s precisely what Libya’s spies did—and what dictatorships all around the world continue to do.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/ff_libya/all/1